Hear the stories of the siege from a local guide

The siege of Sarajevo began in April 1992, when forces surrounding the city cut it off from the rest of Bosnia & Herzegovina and began a campaign of shelling and sniper fire that would last for nearly four years — the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. Through that time the city’s residents lived under constant threat: water and electricity were cut for long periods, food was scarce, and simply crossing certain streets exposed people to snipers in the hills above. The Tunnel of Hope, dug beneath the airport in 1993, became the only physical link to free territory and the means by which people and supplies moved in and out.

What makes hearing these stories from a local guide different from reading them is that the war is not distant history here. The guides were often teenagers or young adults during the siege; the people you pass on the street lived through it; the buildings around you were damaged in it. A guided walk brings that immediacy into the open. The Sarajevo Roses — mortar-impact craters in the pavement filled with red resin to mark where a shell killed civilians — are scattered through the city and are easy to walk over without knowing; a guide points them out. The Markale market square, the sniper-alley streets, the front-line neighbourhoods and the Tunnel of Hope are all within the city a visitor already walks, and a guide connects them into a single account.

For a visitor, this is the experience that does most to balance Sarajevo’s older layers — the Ottoman bazaar, the Habsburg centre, the Olympic mountain — with the chapter that shaped the city everyone meets today. It is sobering rather than entertaining, and it asks for attention and respect, but it is also where the warmth and resilience of present-day Sarajevo become most legible. The city that emerged from the siege is the one hosting you, and hearing how it did so is a meaningful part of understanding it.