This brochure celebrates the completion of a five-year-long restoration and rehabilitation effort in the historic city of Mostar, carried out in parallel with the restoration of Mostar’s most famous landmark, the Old Bridge (Stari Most). While urban rehabilitation efforts are planned to continue after the opening ceremony of the Bridge, this documernt records and presents, in conjunction with the inauguration of the Stari Most, the considerable progress achieved so far.

From the very beginning, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the World Monuments Fund (WMF) realised that the reconstruction of the bridge without an in-depth rehabilitation of the historic neighbourhoods flanking it on the picturesque Neretva riverbanks – its matrix as it were – would be devoid of context and meaning. Thus the whole work programme was shaped in such a way as to establish a framework of urban conservation schemes and individual restoration projects that would help regenerate the most significant areas of historic Mostar, and particularly the urban tissue around the Old Bridge.

Publication date: 2004