National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Zemaljski muzej) is the oldest and largest museum in the country, founded in 1888. It occupies a handsome neo-Renaissance building in the city centre and holds collections covering natural history, archaeology, ethnography, and art — all covering the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina from prehistoric times to the present.

The highlight is the collection of medieval Bosnian stećci — massive carved stone tombstones from the 12th to 16th centuries that are unique to Bosnia and Herzegovina and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The lapidary collection in the museum garden displays some of the finest examples, with elaborate carved decorations including hunting scenes, dancers, and sun-and-moon motifs. The Sarajevo Haggadah — a 14th-century illuminated Jewish manuscript that survived the Holocaust — is also housed here, though it is displayed only periodically.

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The museum closed in 2012 due to lack of funding — a victim of the complex constitutional arrangements of post-war Bosnia in which different ethnic constituencies could not agree on which entity should fund a shared national institution. It reopened in 2015, mostly through international pressure. The episode is an almost perfect illustration of how Bosnia's political structure works in practice.

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