Museum of War and Genocide Victims
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A Mostar branch of the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo (together with the Sarajevo Siege Museum). There are indeed quite a few overlaps and a very similar general approach, but also about enough differences to warrant a visit to both (or all three). As the coverage is more comprehensive and the net cast wider, this museum in Mostar basically rolls both of its Sarajevo counterparts into one.
More background info: in general see under Bosnia and Herzegovina, and cf. Srebrenica.
This is the second of the trio of museums created and curated by the same team that first opened the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in 2016 and then this branch, followed by the Siege of Sarajevo Museum that opened in the capital in 2023. When exactly the Mostar branch opened I could not find out with certainty. But going by the oldest reviews on TripAdvisor it must have been in or before April 2018.
What there is to see: The scene is set even before you enter the museum: there’s military camouflage netting wrapped around the frame of the entrance door.
Inside are several smallish rooms that must once have been a residential flat, I presume. The rooms are quite crammed full, so there’s at times little space to manoeuvre in when the museum is busy. I occasionally had to wait for other visitors to move on, or else changed my circuit through the exhibition to avoid such clashes. But that was only rarely necessary at the time I visited (in April 2025). At peak times this might be more of an issue.
The exhibition is very similar in style and general approach to its “mother institution” in Sarajevo. There’s a gloomy atmosphere, with all the walls painted black and most text panels are with white script on a black background.
All labels and texts are in Serbo-Croat and English. The translation quality here varies, from somewhat flawed but OK to sometimes bordering on the incomprehensible. I wish these museums could bring themselves to have their translations checked over by a professional translator or at least a native speaker of English. But I guess you can’t have everything.
Lots of the text panels are quotations from victims’ or eyewitnesses’ first-hand testimonies/interview transcripts. Some go into harrowing graphic details. And some of the accompanying photos are also not for the faint-hearted. Be forewarned!
In addition there are video screens playing film footage, e.g. from the Siege of Sarajevo or of testimonies at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) in The Hague, Netherlands (see also Sarajevo City Hall).
There are plenty of artefacts and larger installations too. Objects on display include a range of personal belongings, including clothing, such as a bloodied shirt from one victim, shoes, crutches, and in the children’s section toys and dolls.
Foreign aid products are on display as well, including the iconic ICAR canned foods (see Modern History Museum) as well as medical kits. Packs of cigarettes feature too, as in all the exhibitions about the Bosnian war …
Larger installations include a set of scale models of concentration camps peopled by figurines of soldiers and inmates and depict scenes of atrocities/executions. These models look very much like those on display at the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo. And again I wasn’t quite so sure about whether such models were really necessary/appropriate.
Also very similar is the reconstruction of a mass grave forensic dig site, with the same sort of yellow band saying “crime scene”. Strewn about in it are personal items, bones, and, unavoidably it seems, a skull. This particular skull made me chuckle, though, as it’s a not a properly realistic model of a human skull (let alone a real one) but a Halloween-prop-like skull made of resin that was a toilet-brush holder! I recognized it, because I have the exact same model in my toilet at home. The one on display in the exhibition, however, was additionally damaged: it has the right side of the jaw smashed out.
There’s also a collection of landmines and mine warning signs, as well as heaps of cartridges plus one rather large shell. High up on one wall is a sniper’s nest reconstruction and on another a mysterious assortment of coat hangers surrounded by grenades/projectiles and bullets half embedded in the wall with red paint around the entry points … so I guess it might also be symbolic of Sniper Alley (see Sarajevo and Sarajevo Siege Museum).
Another large installation is a life-size reconstruction of what is labelled as an “isolation cell”. Yet inside are three mannequins, all facing the walls, a small family in fact, a woman, a man with his hands tied up behind his back, and a child. So they must have applied a loose definition of “isolation”. On the walls are red handprints and the inscription “HELP”, also in red, as if written in blood. And there’s barbed wire at the “window” through which visitors look into this “cell”. All this to me seemed like more for tear-jerking effect than for any realism.
A flight of stairs with sandbags on the one side leads down into a reconstruction of a basement shelter in which people lived during the Siege of Sarajevo (see photos below). This seemed quite realistic and illustrative of the living conditions during the war.
Thematically, the museum is split between war/war crimes, wartime civilian life and, of course, the Srebrenica genocide and the role played by the UN in it. A large panel with a timeline of the genocide also has a screen showing infamous footage from Srebrenica, including that of Ratko Mladić triumphantly parading through the deserted town in front of TV cameras babbling propaganda like “now it’s time to take revenge on the Turks” … On one wall with yet more military camouflage netting hangs a poster of “wanted men” indicted for war crimes, including the usual suspects of Mladić, Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević (see also Sarajevo City Hall).
While the genocide, war crimes, the concentration camps and the Siege of Sarajevo are well covered, there is rather less specifically about Mostar, unlike what you might expect given the museum’s location. The destruction of the Old Bridge is covered, though (with video footage of its collapse) and amongst the fake rubble used for illustration is one boulder inscribed with the words “Don’t forget ‘93” (the year of the bridge’s destruction) – just like the genuine memorial stone you can find at the actual reconstructed Old Bridge.
There’s also a large pinboard where visitors can leave little post-it notes with comments. Most are of the predictable “never again” or “lest we forget” nature, but I also spotted some decidedly pro-Palestine/anti-Israel notes, as well as one generally demanding an end to “Western imperialism” … there may be much to decry about US imperialism in other parts of the world (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.), but why such a statement in the context of this museum’s topics remains rather unclear to me (if it were a reference to NATO bombings of Belgrade I’d be less surprised, but for the Bosnian context?!?).
All in all, the museum may have its flaws, but as it covers both topics of its other two “sister installations” in Sarajevo, i.e. genocide/war crimes as well as the war and Siege of Sarajevo, this museum is somewhat more comprehensive than the other, more specialized counterparts. So if you are travelling to both Sarajevo and Mostar and have time for only one of these three museums, I’d say make it this Mostar one. However, all three are worth visiting in their own right, and despite quite a bit of overlap and similarity, the Mostar war museum still has enough of its own to warrant a visit even if you’ve already been to the Sarajevo equivalents.
Location: in the centre of Mostar at 130 Maršala Tita Street.
Google Maps locator: [43.3393, 17.8152]
Access and costs: easy to find; not too expensive.
Details: just a short walk from the Old Bridge core of the Old Town of Mostar along the main through road on the eastern side of the Neretva River.
Opening times: daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Admission: 18 KM
Time required: I spent about an hour and twenty minutes in this museum, but didn’t read all the panels (I just took photos of them for later perusal), nor did I linger to watch all the video material played on the screens. If you want to take all of these in there and then, you may need more than three hours.
Combinations with other dark destinations: see under Mostar.
