Mostar

Mostar has around 105,000 inhabitants and lies along the Neretva River, in the heart of Herzegovina. The entire historic center is a pedestrian zone — from the Old Bridge to the Karagöz Bey Mosque it takes less than five minutes on foot. The bridge you see today is the original Ottoman structure from 1566, destroyed during the war in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004 using stone from the same Herzegovinian quarry. The real Mostar experience begins at six in the morning, when the bazaar and the bridge are empty, and ends in one of the cafes above the Neretva — between those two moments, the city is completely different from what day-trippers from Dubrovnik manage to see.