Baščaršija

Baščaršija is the historic bazaar quarter of Sarajevo, a name derived from the Turkish word for main market, and it has been the civic heart of the city since its foundation by Isa-Beg Isaković in the 1460s when he first established the Ottoman city on the Miljacka River.

The quarter is organized on a gentle south-facing slope, its narrow streets following the natural topography rather than any formal grid, so the approach to any landmark is gradual and often diagonal — you see a minaret long before you see the mosque at its base.

The copperbeaters' section (Kazandžiluk) still runs along the old stream bed, and the craft of repousse copperware — decorative trays, coffee pots and bowls — has been practiced here continuously for four centuries, though today it serves as much the tourist market as the domestic one.

At the heart of the quarter the Sebilj, an ornate wooden public drinking fountain on a raised stone platform, has become the unofficial symbol of Sarajevo; the current structure is a 19th-century reconstruction of a baronial drinking fountain, but the form is old and the image of the Sebilj on a stone basin has been repeated on postcards and logos for generations.

The clock tower — Sahat-kula — is one of the few medieval towers in the city and the only one still keeping time; the structure is 36 metres tall, two-faced in the Ottoman manner, and its mechanism has been maintained by one family for generations, a living tradition whose precise historical origins are not well-documented.

The Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque and its courtyard occupy the entire northern edge of the quarter, so entering Baščaršija from the south and walking north through the bazaar streets one is always approaching the mosque, and the call to prayer remains the daily marker of time for the entire neighbourhood.

Beyond the mosque the old Jewish quarter — Veliki and Mali Curiluk — stretches eastward, preserving the names of the synagogues that once stood here; Sarajevo was once home to a significant Sephardic community whose ancestors arrived after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the neighbourhood still carries that layered identity of Jewish, Ottoman and Habsburg Sarajevo.

The Gazi Husrev-beg Bezistan, a vaulted covered market hall just north of the mosque rebuilt after the 1992 shell, houses small workshops and stalls in the same double-naved arcade that served the market in the 16th century, keeping the commercial function of the quarter continuous across five centuries.

It is one of the few Ottoman bazaars in Europe that has remained continuously commercial in function for over 500 years.

The concentration of mosque, bazaar, clock tower, copperbeaters' street and former Jewish quarter in one compact walkable area is remarkable for a city of Sarajevo's size.

The Sebilj and the Kazandžiluk copperbeaters' street are visually distinctive and culturally continuous.