Troubled Waters

Stavi Most; The "Old Bridge" which spans the deep gorge of the Neretva River as it winds its way through the regional town of Mostar, its own name being derived from "Bridge Keepers", in what is now Bosnia Herzogovina, part of the former Communist Yugoslavia.

The bridge was commissioned by the Ottoman Emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent and completed in 1557 replacing a pitiful wooden bridge which did nothing to represent the great power of the Ottomans. Mostar was a frontier town for the Empire in the 16th Century and retained its status through the dominance of the Austro-Hungarian era.

Its architect, Mimar Hayruddin, was a time served apprentice and student of the great Sinan. It would be a step up from understudy to taking on the main contract but there must have been very mixed feelings given that any failure to produce a bridge of unprecedented dimensions would be under pain of death.

Upon its completion the bridge was the widest man made arch in the world, referred to by an awe inspired visitor as "a rainbow rising up to the milky way",

Many technical aspects were a mystery making the work one of the greatest architectural acheivements in history. The main material, a local stone was said to held together by mortar made from egg whites. The bridge was not built with recognisable foundations but from an abutment of limestone linked to wall along the cliff face of the gorge. Fortified towers at each end emphasised the strategic importance of this crossing point as much as the military might of its commissioning Emperor.

The shape of the arch is down to numerous irregularities produced by deformation of the inner line of the arch or in simpler terms, a circle with the centre depressed.

The hump backed bridge is 4m wide , 30 metres long and at its highest point some 24 metres above the river.

Substantial scaffolding and formwork, much advanced for the 16th Century, was relied upon to support the stonework in the construction process. The Architect prepared for his own funeral in the moments before the temporary structure was removed to reveal the full splendour of the bridge.

On 9th November 1993 a relentless bombardment by Croat Forces of up to 60 shells finally caused the bridge to collapse. It had been a regular target for artillery in the attack on Mostar but the final onslaught proved too much for the elegant structure. The Croats claimed that the destruction of a wonder of architecture was legitimate on military grounds but the act was widely seen as an unnecessary act of political vandalism.

The 25000 inhabitants of Mostar were, as a consequence, trapped and under siege and at the mercy of snipers and shortages of water and supplies, In an act of war the shared cultural heritage of a peaceful city had been eradicated.

In the tentative peace that followed the Balkan Conflict it was decided that Stavi Most should be rebuilt. The same local stone was quarried and added to original blocks salvaged from the river bed by specialist divers. It took three years to reconstruct and was opened for use in 2004.

The return of the bridge was regarded as a major step towards reconciliation between factions but the wounds of the savage war remained very real and raw so much so that Mostar remains a divided population unable to bridge the gap of the years of conflict.