LATIN BRIDGE

This eighteenth-century stone structure (Latinska Ćuprija) is the most famous of the city's twenty-six bridges and footbridges: it was just across it, next to the present-day Sarajevo Museum 1878-1918, that Gavrilo Princip murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. To the left of the bridge, on the right bank of the Miljacka River, a small glass memorial with a double column honors the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while panels and an engraved stone are placed on the outer wall of the museum at the exact location of the attack that started World War I. All of these installations are relatively new. All of these installations are relatively recent. Because until 1992, the Yugoslav authorities (royal, then socialist) held the assassin as a hero: for sixty years, the bridge was officially named "Gavrilo-Princip Bridge". It only briefly regained its original name during the German occupation (1941-1945), and more permanently since the declaration of the country's independence. If it is called "Latin", it is because it served the old Latinluk district (around the current museum) where a Catholic community lived until the 18th century. This community followed the "Latin" (Roman) rite, and not the Byzantine rite of the Orthodox, who were the majority Christians in the city at the time.

Towards the Bistrik district. First built in wood around 1541, then in stone some twenty years later, the bridge was completely rebuilt in 1798 to take the form we know it today: a slightly inclined deck 39 m long supported by three piers forming four unequal arches leaning against the banks. The openings of the two main piers are there to lighten the structure and better evacuate the water in case of flood. On the left bank of the Miljacka River, the Latin Bridge leads directly to Austrije Square (Bistrik district), from where trolley buses leave for Skenderija and Dobrinja. Upstream is the Emperor's Bridge (Careva Ćuprija) erected in 1792 opposite the Emperor's Mosque. Downstream, the Ćumurija Bridge was built in 1886 on the site of an old Ottoman wooden structure. Leading to the Bakr-Baba mosque (several times destroyed since the 16th century and rebuilt in 2011), this one owes its name of "coal bridge" to the habit that the inhabitants had to come here to throw their ashes directly into the river. Finally, between Austrije Square and the Bakr-Baba mosque, lies the small park At Medjan and its new musical pavilion (2004), a replica of an Austro-Hungarian building from 1913.