Siege of Sarajevo Museum
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A private museum in the centre of Sarajevo concentrating on the various aspects of the almost four years of siege that the city endured from 1992 to 1995/96 and how the people coped with the difficult and dangerous situation. There’s a strong focus on personal stories accompanied by a plethora of artefacts, many of them personal belongings of Sarajevans they donated to the museum.
More background info: in general see under Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also cf. Modern History Museum!
The Siege Museum is run by the same team that also created the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide and its similar branch in Mostar.
Of the three, the Siege Museum seems to be the newest, opened apparently for the 31st anniversary of the beginning of the siege, so in 2023.
What there is to see: The museum’s exhibition is in a series of rather small rooms in what must have been a residential apartment once. The rooms are filled with a vast number of artefacts, so many in fact that the place can feel a bit crammed full of stuff. And in addition to those artefacts and the labels that accompany them there are countless large text panels with a plethora of personal stories of people who lived through the siege and they give an impression of how these people and their families were affected.
All texts and labels are in Bosnian and English, and the translations, while not polished or grammatically 100% correct, are mostly sufficient in delivering their content. Only occasionally was I left wondering what exactly they were trying to say.
But it really is an awful lot to read. And much of it can be rather harrowing. After a while I resorted to just photographing the personal-story text panels so that I could read them later in my own time at home. That also softened their impact somewhat. I’ve read online reviews by visitors who came out of this museum exhausted and emotionally drained. Fortunately I was able to take those photos, thanks to my good dSLR camera; my wife’s hi-end compact camera failed at the task as the panels’ backgrounds are black with text in small white font – and that can be problematic for autofocus. And just as in the Siege Museum’s two sister museums (see above) the walls are also all black here, so it is generally quite gloomy.
Here and there there are also screens with some film footage, some familiar from TV, others not so.
I won’t give away details of the many personal stories the museum tells, but say a little more about what else there is to see in the museum. Amongst the artefacts on display are military ones, from a full Serbian sniper’s nest above one door with camouflage netting to home-made rifles, Bosnian uniforms and various helmets, including blue UN ones. There are also all manner of grenades and projectiles, often partially embedded in the walls for dramatic effect.
Food provisions from the EU, UN and USAid (when that still existed before Trump #2) are on display, as in all the other siege-related museums. In one corner with such items there’s a rendition of one of the Sarajevo Roses (see under Sarajevo) on the black wall. Amongst the provisions various cans of beer and packs of cigarettes feature a lot. Cigarettes (frequently referred to in the text panels as “cigars”) played a significant role during the siege, not just for smokers (i.e. a vast majority of Bosnians – and nothing has changed in that respect to this day) but also as a currency for bartering on the black market.
There’s a medical section complete with a hospital bed, a doctor’s white coat and so on, and there are some gruesome stories to read about the sort of horrific injuries medics had to deal with, often with limited means (e.g. no electricity, only candlelight).
One uplifting exhibit is that of a book that saved one Sarajevan his life, as the sniper’s bullet meant for him failed to penetrate it fully.
Another topic is education, i.e. the continued schooling of children, often in shelters made from/in basement rooms. The arts are also another strand here, in particular the Sarajevo Film Festival, which was in fact founded during the siege, as well as the Miss Sarajevo Contest.
Predictably the major problem of the water shortage in besieged Sarajevo and the distribution of water through canisters filled at pumps or from water trucks is a big issue too, as is the absence of electricity, so people were forced to use oil lamps and candles for light and made manual generators to power radios and so forth.
One section is about sports, and one story is that of an award-winning athlete who managed to run a marathon in besieged Sarajevo without getting shot!
The construction of the Tunnel of Hope is an important topic here too, of course, and one story of people who used it to get out of Sarajevo is that of a couple of musicians who went through the tunnel to make it to the European Song Contest (!), fared reasonably well in it to much applause and then returned to Sarajevo.
There are also more unusual objects on display such as part of a tram that goes with the story of a Sarajevo tram driver before and occasionally during the siege. In one corner a telephone (a huge one, looking military grade) is mounted to the wall and a sign says you can pick up the receiver to listen to names of victims being read out who had died during the siege (I did not try it).
Many exhibits are smaller personal items donated by people who lived through the siege in various capacities. The grimmest must be a pair of gloves belonging to a gravedigger. Another is battered old meter from a taxi that its driver still used during the siege, despite the fuel shortages.
Shoes feature too, e.g. the high heels a press officer still kept walking in during the siege, or a pair of ballet shoes belonging to a ballerina who grew up during the siege and kept on performing.
There are lots of children’s toys and books and so on with accompanying texts focusing on the lives of children during the siege. A range of personal stories about people who were children of various ages during the siege are provided. (This is an overlap with the War Childhood Museum, where the focus on that angle is sharper and more elaborate.)
But there are also stories of parents who lost their children in the siege, and one glass cabinet is filled with the dolls of one family’s killed children. The mother kept the dolls and later donated them to this museum.
There’s lots more to see in the exhibition but this shall have to suffice as an overview and for a general impression.
All in all, I found the exhibition a bit tricky to get through, both practically (often other visitors were in the way in the narrow passages between exhibits), but also emotionally. Also it felt a bit unstructured and higgledy-piggledy too. But it is doubtlessly an important addition to Sarajevo’s dark-tourism portfolio that complements the city’s other siege-related museums/exhibitions well.
Location: in the heart of central Sarajevo at Jelića 3, just a few steps from the Sacred Heart Cathedral and the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide.
Google Maps locator: [43.8596, 18.4261]
Access and costs: easily reachable on foot from virtually everywhere within Sarajevo’s city centre; not too expensive.
Details: The museum’s location in a side street, one to the east of the Sacred Heart Cathedral, may appear a little hidden, but posters point potential visitors to the entrance, so it’s easy to find.
Opening times: daily from 9 a.m. to as late as 10 p.m. in summer, but hours are likely to be a bit shorter in winter; to be on the safe side maybe don’t go too early or no later than in the middle afternoon, as you may also need a lot of time in the exhibition!
Admission: 18 KM. Note that you can purchase a combination ticket for both the Siege Museum and the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide just down the road for the reduced rate of 30 KM for both – so make sure to keep hold of your ticket when going there afterwards.
Time required: I spent just over an hour in this museum, but I didn’t read all the personal story text panels, instead photographing most of them for reading later at home. That saved a lot of time. Going by how much time I then spent reading those texts at home, I would reckon you’d need at least three to four hours if you wanted to read everything (and watch all the videos) there and then.
Combinations with other dark destinations: in general see under Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Siege of Sarajevo is also covered by a few other places in the city, in particular the Modern History Museum. The War Childhood Museum elaborates more on one of the threads in the Siege Museum, namely the experiences of war seen through the eyes of children. There’s also the more crudely designed Ratni Muzej and the Srebrenica 11/07/95 Gallery, which, despite its more specific name, also has some excellent film material about the siege.
Less so thematically related but practically a good combination is the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide that is just down the road and as it’s run by the same team as the Siege Museum there are combination tickets available for both that save you a bit of money (just make sure to keep hold of your ticket when going to the other museum afterwards).
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Sarajevo.
