VIJEĆNICA

The "Council Hall"(vijećnica, pronounced "viéchnitsa") is the most famous building in Sarajevo. Dominating the Miljacka River from its 27 m height, this massive, Moorish-style, orange-colored, triangular-shaped building is full of history. Designed by Czech architect Karel Pařík (1857-1942) and taken over by his Austro-Croatian colleague Alexander Wittek (1852-1894), it was built between 1891 and 1896 to serve as the town hall. Soon transformed into a court, it houses from 1910 the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an institution created following the official annexation of the country by Austria-Hungary, in 1908. It is in this capacity that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand came here on June 28, 1914. He gave his last speech here. A few moments after the descent of the steps immortalized by photographers, the heir to the imperial throne and his wife were murdered by Gavrilo Princip at the Latin Bridge. The Vijećnica then entered history as the setting for the last moments of peace in a Europe that was about to fall into the First World War. Now a city hall again, the building would be the main target of German troops during the capture of Sarajevo on April 16, 1941.

A burning library. Shortly after the liberation of the city, on June 4, 1945, the building became home to the new Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But it acquired its letters of nobility in 1956 when it became the seat of the national and university library. The Vijećnica then became the symbol of the cultural influence of Sarajevo throughout socialist Yugoslavia. Also, at the beginning of the siege of the city, on May 25, 1992, it was targeted by Bosnian-Serb artillery that riddled it with twenty-five incendiary shells. The roof collapsed in the flames taking with it more than a million books. The images of the Vijećnica once again move the whole world, especially that of the "cellist of Sarajevo", Vedran Smailović, who comes here to play alone amidst the rubble on September 12, 1992. After the war, an international reconstruction project was launched. Completed in 2014, it led to a disappointing result. If artists and intellectuals wanted to make it a place of memory, the Vijećnica is now a municipal administrative building. However, one can visit the reception hall for distinguished guests, an exhibition space in the basement dedicated to the history of the building as well as part of the rich collection of the Ars Aevi Museum.