Ten years ago, the famous bridge in Mostar was reopened

Mostar/Prague - For more than four centuries, the Stari Most has been an inseparable part of Herzegovina's Mostar. It attracted not only daredevils eager to jump from it into the Neretva River but also crowds of tourists during the Yugoslav era. Everything changed during the battles of the 1990s when the fate of the structure, designed by the Turkish architect Mimar Hajrudin, became a sad symbol of the civil war. The monument, which had little military significance, collapsed into the waves in November 1993 after heavy shelling. The rebuilt bridge was opened ten years ago, on July 23, 2004.
The reconstruction itself was undertaken by the Turkish company Erbu, which specializes in bridges from the Ottoman era. The reconstruction of the majestic bridge arch cost about 15 million euros (then around 450 million crowns), and the festive reopening of the bridge was attended by many politicians and statesmen from around the world, including the heir to the British throne, Charles, and the Secretary-General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura.