City Hall
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One of the grandest edifices from the Austro-Hungarian era in Sarajevo. Burned out after shelling by Bosnian Serb artillery at the beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992, the building was painstakingly restored over many years and is now resplendent again, also inside. The interior spaces are used not just for the office of the mayor and the City Council but also for art exhibitions and other museum elements. From a dark-tourism perspective the most significant elements are the exhibition about the shelling and burning of the building in the war as well as the reconstructed ICTY courtroom and adjacent exhibition of the trials and convictions of all the war criminals brought before that court.More background info: The City Hall, or ‘Vijećnica’ as it is known locally, was designed by a Czech architect, but completed by others, namely between 1891 and 1894. Its architectural style is that of the distinctive pseudo-Byzantine or pseudo-Moorish that was popular at the time in the Habsburg era (Mostar has an equivalent in the Secondary School ‘Gymnasium’ and in Vienna the main police barracks as well as the Arsenal building, home of the HGM, are in a similar architectural style). In 1896 the completed building was formally handed over to the city authorities.
On 28 June 1914, a reception was held here for Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, who were on an official visit to Sarajevo. Shortly after they had left the City Hall both were assassinated on their drive back, an event that triggered WW1 (see Franz Ferdinand assassination site and 1878-1918 Museum).
From the late 1940s the building served as a national and university library, holding a treasure trove of valuable books, manuscripts and documents.
At an early stage in the war in Bosnia, in August 1992, the building came under Bosnian Serb artillery fire and went up in flames. While several librarians and other people tried to save some of the valuable contents of the library, almost the entirety of the well over 1.5 million works, many of immense national wealth and absolutely irreplaceable, were lost in the blaze.
Famously, Bosnian musician Vedran Smailović played his cello inside the ruined building later that year as an act of defiance. He also played in other sites of atrocities within Sarajevo, even under threat of sniper fire. He escaped the city in 1993 (and now lives in Northern Ireland).
For the rest of the war and the years following it, the former library stood as a burned-out empty shell and one of the most notable Sarajevo war ruins. When I first visited Sarajevo in August 2009, the building was still boarded up and inaccessible. A plaque on the outside stated that the place was set on fire by “Serbian criminals” and added “do not forget – remember and learn”. On my return visit in April 2025, I could no longer see that plaque. Maybe I overlooked it or it had been removed, possibly due to the confrontational choice of words (“criminals”)?
Initial structural repairs were begun in the late 1990s, other restoration stages followed, thanks to foreign donations and funds from the EU, and by 2012 the exterior was back to its former glory. The interior was also restored as much as possible to what it had looked like before the war. But of course the library’s contents could not be brought back.
In July 2014 the building was formally reopened to the public. Once again, it serves as the City Hall, seat of the mayor of Sarajevo and the City Council, but many of the interior spaces fulfil other functions, including a number of historical and art exhibitions accessible to everyone. As some of these have suitably dark themes, it also became an important sight for me to visit in Sarajevo when I was back there in April 2025.
I’m indebted to my guide Stefan from Funky Tours for alerting me to the fact that the City Hall also houses a reconstruction of the courtroom of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that originally took place in The Hague, in the Netherlands, and in which several dozens of perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide were tried and prosecuted. Fortunately, I still had enough time left to add the City Hall to my sightseeing.
What there is to see: Before going inside, it is worth appreciating the remarkable exterior of this architectural gem in its pseudo-Moorish style. The building has a roughly triangular shape with the front facade facing the Miljacka River embankment. This front part is also where the entrance is located.
Once you’ve parted with the money for the admission fees (see below), you are free to explore a good proportion of the interior. Some administrative and office parts remain off limits to visitors, but you can see the impressively grand restored octagonal central atrium with its colourful glass ceilings, the grand staircase, the main ceremonial hall, and even enter the plenary hall of the City Council (you’re just not to touch anything or sit on any of the seats). An adjacent exhibition contains portraits of the various mayors the city has had over the years and also outlines the general system of governance in Sarajevo and Bosnia.
On the upper levels I saw a remarkable modern art exhibition, which included some stunning and quite often daring works, several of which had dark elements like various references to the war as well (but of course I couldn’t put any photos of copyrighted works of art in the galley below).
One room is dedicated to the reception held for Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie just prior to their assassination on 28 June 1914 on their drive back. There are restored pieces of period furniture and even tables laid with teapots, cups and biscuits. In a corner stand two faceless mannequins dressed in clothes like Franz Ferdinand and his wife as they would have worn on that fateful day. There’s also a glass display cabinet with a model of the sort of car that they were driven and assassinated in. (By the way, the Archduke’s bloodied uniform and the original car, complete with bullet hole, are on display at the HGM in Vienna.)
Things get even more relevant to dark tourism in the exhibition in the basement that is about the City Hall building as such, and in particular its destruction early on in the war in Bosnia (see above). There are lots of photos of the building ablaze after the shelling and even more of the ruined and partially collapsed interior. An installation with a real cello balanced on rubble commemorates the impromptu “concert” given inside the ruins by Vedran Smailović (see above) in late 1992, who is shown on a large blow-up of a black-and-white photo of him playing. A pile of partially scorched books serves as a memorial to all the lost contents of the former library in the blaze. Some original interior parts are also on display.
But the most significant part from a dark perspective is the full life-size reconstruction of the ICTY courtroom, which was originally located in The Hague, the Netherlands, and the attached information centre about its work. A photo of the original courtroom shows how close to the original the reconstruction is. In the rooms next door is an exhibition about the work of the court, its judges and, most importantly, all the defendants that stood trial at the ICTY and the sentences they were given and for exactly what. This not only includes the three “big name” principal war criminals Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, but also less well-known ones, in fact the entire lot that were tried over the many years of the court’s operational phase between 1993 and the end of 2017.
It’s mostly documents and text-and-photo panels detailing all those cases. There are few artefacts, but in one corner a few hundred cartridges of different calibres have been amassed. This is echoed by a mock-up of a wall pockmarked with (mock) bullet holes. The “star exhibit”, though, has to be the original judge’s gavel used at the ICTY and gifted to the City Hall in November 2018.
All in all, this is quite an impressive addition to Sarajevo’s tourism portfolio, dark and otherwise, that I hadn’t even known about when I came on my return trip to Bosnia in April 2025, but was alerted to its existence by my guide when I was on my Franz Ferdinand Tour with Funky Tours. The most important part is the information centre about the ICTY with the full reconstruction of the courtroom and the detailed information about all the trials and the war criminals sentenced in them. A must-see when in Sarajevo!
Location: just to the east of Sarajevo’s famous Old Town (Baščaršija); the main entrance is at the eastern end of Obala Kulina bana right by the Miljacka River.
Google Maps locator: [43.8591, 18.4335]
Access and costs: easy to get to, very reasonably priced.
Details: From anywhere within Sarajevo’s compact city centre it is walkable, just head for the eastern end of the touristy Old Town (Baščaršija), cross the road and you’re there. The distinctive building is pretty much impossible to miss. There’s also a tram stop (“Vijećnica”, lines 1, 2 and 3) right across the street from the main entrance. Driving there cannot be recommended. Even though there is a small car park at the site, you’d need luck to get a space.
Opening times: daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission: a very reasonable 10 KM (ca. 5 EUR); this covers all the different exhibitions inside.
I saw a guided group tour in the ICTY information centre, but have no details about these or how to book one (I’ve no idea if they’d also be available for individual visitors, and not just organized groups).
Time required: I spent just under an hour and a half in the City Hall, but if you want to read all the details about every single case in the ICTY information centre part, then you will need substantially longer than that!
Combinations with other dark destinations: in general see under Sarajevo.
If you want to learn more about the crimes perpetrated by those tried at the ICTY, then head first and foremost to the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide and also to the Srebrenica 11/07/95 Gallery, or even Srebrenica itself (day tour). The Siege of Sarajevo Museum may also be of relevance, and/or the Modern History Museum.
The nearest other related dark site would be the Franz Ferdinand assassination site and the 1878-1918 Museum, just a bit further west, down the embankment of the Miljacka River.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: The City Hall is to a large degree already a non-dark attraction, what with its grand architecture and splendid interior design.
For more see under Sarajevo in general.
