Vijećnica — City Hall and National Library

Transcript

Vijećnica — vee-YETCH-nee-tsah — was built under Austro-Hungarian rule and opened in the 1890s as Sarajevo City Hall. Its pseudo-Moorish style is itself political: Habsburg architects developed an “Oriental” visual language intended to acknowledge Bosnia’s Islamic heritage while presenting imperial modernity.

After the Second World War the building became the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the siege, shelling set it on fire in August 1992. Huge numbers of books, manuscripts and archival materials were destroyed. The building was later restored and reopened.

That sequence makes Vijećnica unusually revealing. An imperial city hall became a Yugoslav-era library, then a wartime target and finally a restored national monument.

Architecture likes to imply permanent purpose. Sarajevo keeps changing the job description.

Synthetic narration. Sources are linked below.

Sources

• Museum of Sarajevo — Austro-Hungarian administration in Sarajevo
• Museum of Sarajevo — Sarajevo assassination: 112 years later
• Museum of Sarajevo — 20th-century collection
• Olympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina — Olympic Museum
• Museum of Sarajevo — Memory of the Markale massacre