War Childhood Museum
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A unique and award-winning museum in Sarajevo presenting insights into the war in Bosnia exclusively through the eyes of affected children, using objects donated and stories provided by them as adults looking back at their memories. So it’s highly personal and individual – and very well presented. The museum also covers similar aspects of current wars in other parts of the world, in particular Ukraine.
More background info: The museum goes back to an initiative by one individual activist, Jasminko Halilović, himself a Sarajevo “war child” in 1992-95, who in 2010 started collecting memories of individuals who had lived through the Bosnian war, and the Sarajevo Siege in particular, as children. Now adults, some 1000 participants contributed to the collection. This became the basis for the book “War Childhood” first published in early 2013. This has subsequently been translated into several languages (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Polish).
During the research and interviews with former “war children”, lots of personal belongings, photographs, documents, diaries and so on played an important part, so the idea to create a museum with such items donated to it was born in 2012. Preparations began in earnest in 2015. Hundreds (by now it’s thousands) of items were collected and in 2016 a preliminary temporary exhibition was shown at the Modern History Museum in Sarajevo. In 2017 the museum proper finally opened its doors to the public.
Work is ongoing, though, and in recent years the focus was widened to include war childhood stories (and associated objects) from Syria, Palestine and Ukraine. And while Syria managed to rid itself of its dictator Assad and end a long internal war (well, at least potentially), the bombing of Gaza and the holding of Israeli hostages continues. The inclusion of Ukraine is especially poignant because Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against its neighbour is also still ongoing and with no end in sight.
Only a certain proportion of the museum’s collection is on display, but its archive allegedly is the largest of its kind worldwide that is dedicated to the experience of children living through war. Its mission, apart from the usual “never again”, is also to raise awareness of adults about war children and the responsibilities of adults towards them and also towards their obligation to make the world a better one, not just for children but everyone.
The museum also organizes special exhibitions as well as travelling and pop-up ones. It also has an Education Resource Centre, arranges special creative workshops for the young and is working on an interactive game based on the museum’s content to be released in 2026.
In 2018 the museum was awarded the prestigious Council of Europe Museum Prize.
What there is to see: When you’ve found the building that the museum is housed in take note of its “logo”: a Banksy-like image of two kids, a girl and a boy, jointly holding up a balloon on a string … except that this balloon has the shape of a hand grenade.
Inside you first come to the ticket desk and museum shop – where the book “War Childhood” (see above) is available as well as various items such as mugs featuring the museum’s distinctive logo. You also encounter that logo in life-size at the end of one of the corridors leading to the main exhibition.
En route to the main exhibition room is also an interactive installation where you can poke your nose inside little plastic funnels attached to small bottles to sample various scents – all under the question “What’s the scent of your childhood?” On offer were: books (do they have a distinctive smell?!?), pastries, chocolate, mud, freshly mowed grass and the seaside. My wife and I agreed that our respective childhoods’ defining scents were not represented here (for my wife it’s “wet dog” and for me it’s “harbours and diesel fumes”).
The main, so-called permanent exhibition, mostly housed in one large hall, is not actually all that permanent in reality. As I found out from the museum’s excellent website, they rotate the items from their vast collection that are actually displayed every year, so that previously not exhibited items also get shown. The focus on specific aspects of war childhoods changes with these rotations too. So it could be quite different from year to year!
There is hence little point in going too much into detail about specific objects and the associated personal stories that I encountered on my visit in April 2025. It would be redundant/outdated within half a year. So here’s just a rough overview of the nature of the museum:
Exhibited artefacts are displayed either hanging on wires from the ceiling together with text panels associated with each item, or they are inside glass display cabinets with the associated personal-story text panels in front.
All texts in the exhibition, by the way, are in Bosnian with English translations (which are of good quality generally).
At one point in the exhibition I noticed a pack of tissues strategically placed amongst the exhibits – presumably for people to help themselves to a tissue should tears well up. I’d only ever seen that provision of tissues for crying in New York at 9/11-related exhibitions.
Amongst the artefacts on display when I was at the museum in April 2025 were several soft toys that had great meaning during the war to the persons who later donated them to the museum. The same is true for various books, wooden toy guns and different items of clothing. As in the other siege-related museums (see below) water canisters and food items supplied by aid organizations featured here too, and, again, the latter included packs of cigarettes … that made we wonder at what age do Bosnians typically pick up smoking …
In addition to items related to the war in Bosnia 1992-1995/96, there were also several items related to child stories from other, current wars, such as Gaza and, especially, Ukraine (the museum has a dedicated Ukraine curator amongst its large team!), such as a portable sewing machine and a red purse that once belonged to the donator’s grandmother who was killed by a Russian shell.
What I found most engaging, though, were not the artefacts as such and their associated stories, but rather those memories related to visitors by living adults in video testimonies. Those stories were not always full of tragedy and mourning, but sometimes also replete with humour and wonderment at what things they were doing during the war on certain occasions (e.g. attempting to climb down from an apartment block’s balcony a few floors up to get down to help their injured parents). I was captivated and watched almost all of the testimonies the screen played.
All in all, this museum exceeded all my expectations. Whereas some of the grimmer Sarajevo museums about the war and siege (see below) often overwhelm visitors with the sheer number of artefacts and the copious amount of text, the War Childhood Museum strikes a perfect balance, by concentrating on 40 personal stories and associated objects and keeping the text excerpts to an amount you can actually digest there and then. Moreover they offer optional audio and digital aids for those who do want to delve deeper. Furthermore, it’s one of the few dark-themed museums that actively aims at a child audience too, and not just adults (see below).
Overall, small as it is, this is one very thoughtfully curated museum and an extremely captivating one at that. Highly recommended!
Location: just north of the core of the Sarajevo city centre at Logavina 32.
Google Maps locator: [43.8619, 18.4284]
Access and costs: fairly easy to find; reasonably priced.
Details: The museum is a short (ca. 5 minutes), but uphill walk from the main Sarajevo city centre thoroughfare Mula Mustafe Bašeskije. Trams (lines 1, 2 and 3) run along that street and Logavina branches off it halfway between the tram stops Katedrala to the west and Baščaršija to the east, from where it’s another five minutes walk.
Parking is very limited at the museum and spaces can be reserved only for those who really need them due to mobility issues (contact the museum ahead of time at visit[at]warchildhood.org). The exhibition itself is also wheelchair-accessible.
Opening times: daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (last admission 6.30 p.m.). Closed on New Year’s Day (and on New Year’s Eve it closes early at 4 p.m.), also on 1st of May and national holidays 1st of March and 25th of November.
Admission: 10 KM (ca. 5 EUR), university students 8 KM, youths (6-17 years old) 5 KM, and it’s free for children under 6. Every last Thursday of the month admission to the museum is free from 5 p.m. until closing time.
The museum is, not so surprisingly, quite child-friendly in general, with two interactive guides specially designed for children, one for those aged 4 to 8, and another aimed at those over 8 years old. There’s also a “children’s corner” with drawing material and books. The main exhibition uses symbols to mark individual exhibits as “child-friendly”. So it’s actually quite family-friendly, really. There are also family tickets available at 25 KM that are valid for 2 adults and up to 5 children! I even spotted small stepladders so the little ones can view the exhibits in glass display cabinets better.
Time required: I spent well over an hour in this museum, despite its small size, and I guess if you use an audio guide or the online guide, accessible on-site through QR codes to scan with a smartphone, you could linger a lot longer here.
Combinations with other dark destinations: in general see under Sarajevo.
There are several other museums in the city covering the war in Bosnia and the Siege of Sarajevo in particular, and they are all tougher and certainly not as child/family-friendly. The most important are the Sarajevo Siege Museum and its sister institution the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (both of which are hard going and very dark, in parts quite graphically so), as well as the main exhibition at the Modern History Museum. The Srebrenica 11/07/95 Gallery, despite its more specific name, also covers the Siege of Sarajevo in parts, especially through film, one of which also features some remarkable children!
Unlike its “competitors” listed above, the War Childhood Museum also runs an excellent website with lots more material available online, including video testimonies and access to research projects and past special exhibitions. It’s a vast treasure trove.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Sarajevo. The famous Old Town (Baščaršija), the city’s premier mainstream tourist attraction, is just a short stroll away down the road from the museum.
