The hero images advertising Mostar to tourists is always Stari Most (literally ‘old bridge’), a rebuilt 16th-century Ottoman bridge in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina that was demolished in 1993 by Croat paramilitary forces during the Croat–Bosniak War. Unlike most other demolished Bosnian buildings, the bridge was completely reconstructed, opening on 23 July 2004.
Tourists queue, led like sheep with their tour guides waving flags to stop them getting lost and many, after too many holiday lunches and beers, struggle to safely walk across the small but steep bridge without grabbing the handrails. The goal for most it seems is to get to the top for a selfie against the backdrop of the rich viridian hued Neretva River. Today, I too, ended up swept up in the wave of tourists, jostling to get past the hoards, not accustomed to queuing. However, with a heat wave approaching, I previously sought another memorial to the past battles of the former Yugoslavia, the Partisan Memorial Cemetery, in a very non-touristy area on the edge of town. This seems to be the pattern when seeking out spomeniks; they are often hidden and google maps (or any maps) can’t make sense of them, often sending me into the jungles, to dead ends and locked gates, like happened in Nis when I was sent the wrong way to the Bubanj Memorial and ended up in a remote forest; at least it combines my interest in hiking. Perseverance prevailed today, and I ended up at the foot of the cemetery but previously I actually found myself climbing up the top of the high part of the cemetery monument as I had followed a feral pathway led by google maps. Seeing a lone man at the foot of the cemetery appearing to ‘examine’ himself, I decided not to scale down the high walls and circumnavigated my way around to the front. This time only one young woman, perhaps a teenager was at the site, so I considered myself safe, ignoring the red travel alert on the spomenik database website which outlined: due to the nature of the Mostar Partisan Cemetery acting as a symbol for the city's ethnic tension, the site's safety is a factor that must be taken into consideration when visiting as a tourist. This is particularly true in light of the recent attack by 20 masked assailants upon an international student group touring the memorial complex in November of 2017.
There are no signs outside indicating where it is; the pathway is littered and overgrown, so, like me, you must be keen to go.
Comparing it to Stari Most, I believe it has just as much historical clout and is actually bigger; physically, some tourists would struggle to make it up the steep paths but they could view it from below. Although the symbology of Stari Most can’t be ignored, The Partisan Cemetery is also a unique and large memorial that has the potential to host performances and become a real draw-card. It was once a political target but now it has become abandoned.
The cemetery was built in 1965 by a renowned Serbian Bogdan Bogdanovic known for his many memorials to the Partisans and fascist victims – the most notable being ‘Flower’ monument dedicated to the victims of the WWII Croatian fascist concentration camp at Jasenovac, another one on my spomenik hit-list; this one will have to wait until I visit Croatia.
This spomenik complex commemorates the 560 (or 810, depending what you read) named fallen World War II fighters from Mostar whose bodies are buried in the cemetery here; each of the fighters were members of the Partisan National Liberation Army and died fighting against the Axis Ustaše and German occupiers in this final battle in 1945.
The cemetery/ spomenik features a 300-metre-long paved ceremonial pathway rising more than 20 metres up the hill. It took stonemasons from the Croatian island of Korcula several years to build it, using over 12,000 carved limestone pieces, rubble from the town’s destruction during WWII and traditional stone roof tiles recycled from Mostar houses.
A serpentine pathway and two stairways lead to a big lower platform from where the view stretches over Mostar. From a lower platform, a stairway behind the wall leads to a smaller upper platform with a fountain and the central architectonic feature – a ‘cosmological sundial’.
“The Partisan necropolis was Mostar in miniature, a replica of the town on the Neretva [river going through Mostar],” Bogdanovic wrote in his essay ‘Mostar’s City of the Dead’ in 1997.
However, the war that ravaged the town in the 1990s during conflicts between Croats and Bosniaks as well as the Yugoslav People’s Army, completely changed attitudes towards the monument and the former Yugoslavia’s anti-fascist heritage in general. Apparently local youths have in the past vandalised it with swastikas, considering that it represented communism. I didn’t see any of this although maybe it has been cleaned since.
During the Bosnian war in 1992, the complex was attacked with explosives, putting off anyone intending to visit it. It was therefore considered that the cemetery was the first thing fired upon in Mostar rather than the old stone bridge.
Experts say that many people joined the anti-fascist Partisan movement in Mostar; out of the city’s pre-WWII 18,000 inhabitants, around 6,000 joined the Partisans, of whom over 750 were killed during the war. The term Partisan was commonly used with reference to German-occupied Yugoslavia, Italy, and parts of Eastern Europe in the Second World War.
The transition between isolation to stifling crowdedness was marked as I found myself in the labyrinth of laneways of Old Town, making my way to Stari Most, as you do in Mostar. The deserted forests near the Partisan cemetery gave way to masses of slow moving tourists and souvenir shops and thankfully, the ubiquitous gelato shops, a welcome relief in the heat. Putting my ICOM pass to use, after making it over the bridge in record time (about one minute, no selfie stopping), I visited the little Bridge museum and found myself to be the only one there, possibly the steep and narrow steps or the cover charge putting off the tourists with their sites and selfie stops to tick off. With each ascension to the top of this ancient little building, didactic information was given on the history of the bridge, but the real reward was the view from the top;
having visited the attendant reminded me that the second part of the museum was around the corner through a locked gate; this time it took me underground, where, I was able to experience parts of the original 16th century bridge, cave like and cool.
On the other side of the bridge was a smaller War Photographs museum; for about 6 BAM (don’t you love that acronym for Bosnian Marks?) I digested reproduced photographs of the Bosnian war which cemented my understanding and empathy for survivors and those that lost their lives. Real images of Bosnians collecting rationed water in plastic bottles every day at risk of being shot made it hard to believe this only happened twenty five years ago.
One of the advantages of walking everywhere rather than catching public transport is the stuff you see along the way. Travel for me is not just about the end goal. On my walk from the Partisan cemetery to Stari Most I passed another smaller Spomenik, a Memorial Fountain (without water), also to the Partisan soldiers in WWII which has been restored after being filled with bullet holes in the 1990s Bosnian war.
Then, I was distracted into a small cemetery totally devoted to those who died in 1992. There would have been at least one hundred tombstones, mainly of men around my age, and at least one woman. I remembered back to the Srebrenica museum I had visited in Sarajevo thinking about how hundreds of men and boys were taken away, killed and buried along with mines, so that when those tried to dig their family members up, they also would be killed. I assumed something similar happened in Mostar.
The streets along the route to the Partisan cemetery were also peppered with bullet and mortar holed buildings, some more perforated than those I saw in Sarajevo. The city has either tolerated or even encouraged artists to embrace and highlight what has happened to the city, as there was plenty of clever and creative street art painted over some of these ruins. Given that many may eventually be demolished to make way for modern high rises, this seems a good use of the space.
Like in Sarajevo, many of these buildings, even ones that were almost shells, had functioning apartments inside, with modern windows, showing the resilience of the materials used in the communist era.
Stari Most stands as a symbol of solidarity and unity between the two sides of the river and stood for four centuries before being destroyed deliberately by being fired with more than 60 shells in 1993; its demolition was also an example of cultural property destruction. I hope people who continue to visit the new one also learn about the whole history of the Bosnian war by venturing beyond the bridge, the orthodox churches and the restaurants to wander around the town.
Sadly, many who visit are doing so on day trips from Dubrovnik and other tourist hot spots so may not have time. During a private tour I took to Tjentiste recently, my guide Emina was horrified to learn I was staying in Mostar for four nights. ‘I can take you there in a day and show you all the sites’, she offered, ‘and besides it’s going to be hot’. The weather is tipped to hit 38 tomorrow and it will be day 3 in Mostar for me. I bet Emina didn’t think I would be scaling the top of the Partisan cemetery or taking photos of street art covered war scarred buildings. I’m just beginning.
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