The town of Mostar is in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the past, Mostar was the capital and most important city of Herzegovina. It is in a hilly area, next to the Neretva River, and on the rail line between Sarajevo and Ploče. Mostar was first mentioned in 1452, and in the 1600s it was used as a Turkish military town. It was the Turks who built the town’s stone arch bridge over the Neretva in 1566, replacing the old wooden suspension bridge. 

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This is where the name Mostar comes from, as most means “bridge” in Serbo-Croatian. This 90-foot-wide stone bridge was a masterpiece of Ottoman building. It had a single arch in the middle. During the Bosnian civil war in November 1993, Bosnian Croat troops destroyed the bridge with artillery fire. A big project was started to rebuild the bridge and nearby buildings that were also destroyed. The bridge reopened in 2004. In 2005, UNESCO put the bridge and the area around it to its list of World Heritage Sites.