National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Country's oldest museum: archaeology, ethnology and natural history in four garden pavilions.
Founded in 1888, the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the country's oldest modern cultural institution. Its holdings were first gathered under Austro-Hungarian administration, and in 1913 the collections moved into a purpose-built complex designed by the Czech architect Karel Pařík. Four symmetrical pavilions in a Renaissance Revival manner enclose a central garden, an arrangement that allowed each discipline its own wing. The museum sits on Zmaja od Bosne in Marijin Dvor, opposite the parliament building and within walking distance of the city centre.
The collections are arranged in four departments: archaeology, ethnology, natural history and a research library of roughly 162,000 volumes. The best-known single object is the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Sephardic manuscript made in fourteenth-century Iberia and shown in a dedicated room. The courtyard doubles as a botanical garden displaying medieval carved tombstones known as stećci. The building was damaged by shelling during the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo, and funding difficulties closed the museum between 2012 and 2015 before it reopened.
Highlights
- The Sarajevo Haggadah, a fourteenth-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript
- Four Renaissance Revival pavilions by Karel Pařík around a garden court
- Botanical garden with medieval stećak tombstones, including the Zgošća stone
- Ethnology department with reconstructed Bosnian interiors and costume
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