The The exhibition “Besieged Sarajevo” offers a powerful insight into everyday life during the longest siege in modern history exhibition of the Historical Museum presents the everyday life of Sarajevo citizens during the siege. It shows the resilience, resourcefulness and creativity of Sarajevans in dealing with days without electricity, water and heating. Exhibit installations give an impression of wartime markets, schools and hospitals and the museum emphasizes the importance of cultural life for the city’s spirit of resistance during the siege.

This bridge is notorious for the sad fate of four Sarajevo citizens. On April 5th 1992, on the verge of war, Sarajevo citizens organized peace protests in front of the nearby Government building. Serb Democratic Party snipers fired from the Holiday Inn hotel at the crowd and hit Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić (Bosniak and Croat), who thereafter died of their injuries at the Vrbanja bridge. On May 19th 1993, the young couple of Admira Ismić and Boško Brkić (Bosniak and Serb) were also killed on this bridge in their attempt to escape the besieged city.

The Bosnian Serb Army was in control of the Grbavica neighborhood across the Miljacka river and used Grbavica’s high-rise apartment blocks as sniper positions, targeting anything and anyone that moved on Sarajevo’s main Zmaj od Bosne boulevard. International journalists were mostly based in the Holiday Inn hotel at this same boulevard and soon after the start of the siege they coined it Sniper Alley.

The workers’ neighborhood of Grbavica was under Serb control during the entire Siege of Sarajevo. The neighborhood was heavily fortified by the Bosnian Serb Army and it was used as a stronghold to shell and snipe at the rest of the city. The non-Serb inhabitants of Grbavica were exposed to war crimes as forced labour, rape, torture and executions. The notorious Serb paramilitary commander Veselin Vlahović Vlatko who was in charge at Grbavica was convicted to 42 years of prison for these war crimes

The frontline of the Siege of Sarajevo ran straight through the neighborhood of Dobrinja, located next to Sarajevo International Airport. Serb forces had taken control of the airport at the start of the war but were forced to hand the airport over to the UN for humanitarian purposes. Food and arms supplies for the besieged City of Sarajevo were organized from Mount Igman, crossing the UN-controlled airport and the Dobrinja neighborhood. This supply route increased the strategic importance of Dobrinja and heavy street to street fighting continued throughout the siege.

The runaway of the UN-controlled airport was the only way in and out of the besieged city of Sarajevo, but crossing it was risking being arrested by the UN, or worse, hit by Serb sniper and mortar positions on each side of the airport. The Bosnian Army therefore constructed a 785m tunnel under the runaway between March and June 1993. Upon completion, the tunnel was crucial for arms and food supplies to the besieged city and for troop movements and reinforcements of the Bosnian Army.

The frontlines on Mount Trebević directly overlooked Sarajevo Old Town. From this elevated and dominating position the Bosnian Serb Army shelled the city, burning down the Vijećnica library and causing massacres at food and water cues. Warfare at Mount Trebević, furthermore, destroyed the Olympic Bobsled Track, which remains in ruins today as a sad reminder of the proud days of Sarajevo as the Olympic host city in 1984.