Chapter 3 THE OLD BRIDGE One is only blasé about this masterly bridge before seeing it. The perfection of its arch, once it is there before one’s eyes, has one in instant submission, perhaps because it epitomizes the highly strung beauty of Mostar. - Brian W. Aldiss, 1966 1 The image and meaning of the Old Bridge embodied the meaning and spirit of all Bosnia. The essence of the bridge is meeting and linking, the opposite of separation and division. That is why the fate of this bridge and this country is one and the same. – Ivan Lovrenović, 1995 2 Aldiss and Lovrenović are far from alone in their assessments of the meaning and significance of Mostar’s sixteenth-century Old Bridge, whose importance has resonated far beyond its city and county. Of all the debates about architecture and urban planning in postwar Mostar, or anywhere in Bosnia-Hercegovina, this particular site, which was destroyed in 1993, has caught and kept the world’s attention more than any other. Internationally, the Old Bridge’s rebuilding has been ubiquitously associated with reuniting the city of Mostar and with multicultural reconciliation in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The discussion surrounding the reconstruction of this one iconic site has therefore demonstrated both the competition between Mostar’s unifying and divisive tendencies as well as between Bosnia’s shared and particularist identities. 1 Aldiss, Cities and Stones: A Traveler’s Jugoslavia (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1966),106-107. 2 Lovrenović, “Svijet bez Mosta” [The World without the Bridge] Most 91 (November -December 1995), http://www.most.ba/002/046.htm. 198