The siege of Sarajevo: a guide to the sites that remember it

What the siege was

The siege of Sarajevo lasted 1,425 days, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996. Bosnian Serb forces held the hills that ring the city — Trebević, the slopes above Grbavica, positions along Igman — and controlled roads, water and power into the valley below. Sarajevo sits at around 500 metres of altitude, hemmed in by mountains on three sides: the same geography that made it a natural Olympic host in 1984 made it a trap once the surrounding heights were held by an armed force. Around 11,000 people were killed over the course of the siege, including close to 1,600 children. It remains the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare.

This page sets out the sites that document it factually: the Tunnel of Hope in Butmir, the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the War Childhood Museum, and the Sarajevo roses in the pavement across the city centre. None of it needs embellishing. The dates, numbers and locations are the content.

The tunnel that kept the city alive

The Tunel spasa — the Tunnel of Hope, sometimes given as Tunnel of Salvation — was dug by hand in 1993 under the runway of Sarajevo’s airport, which the United Nations controlled as a neutral strip but would not let people cross. It ran roughly 800 metres between a house on the Dobrinja side and a house in Butmir on the free-territory side, just under a metre wide and one and a half metres high in most sections. It was the only route in or out of the besieged city for weapons, food, mail, fuel and people, including wounded civilians carried through on stretchers or small trolleys.

About 20 metres of the original tunnel are open to visitors today, entered through the Kolar family house in Butmir, which has stood since the war and now holds a small museum: photographs, tunnel tools, a section of rail cart, and a short film. Entry costs around 10-15 KM. The site is a genuine relic rather than a reconstruction, and it is small — most visits run 30 to 45 minutes including the film.

Getting there independently means a taxi (about 20-25 KM one way from the centre) or a combination of tram and a walk, since Butmir sits out past the airport, away from the tram lines. Because of that distance, most visitors see the tunnel as part of a guided route rather than alone. A guided route covering the siege sites, including the tunnel typically pairs Butmir with Sniper Alley and one or two vantage points in a single afternoon, which is a reasonable way to use the time if you’re not driving yourself.

A version built around cycling, a guided bike tour that includes tunnel entry, covers similar ground at a different pace and is worth considering if you’d rather move under your own power than sit in a van.

Sniper Alley

Ulica Zmaja od Bosne — the wartime nickname “Sniper Alley” stuck and is still used — is the wide boulevard running from the airport area into the city centre, past the Holiday Inn (which housed foreign journalists throughout the siege) and the high-rises of Grbavica.

It was overlooked by Serb positions on the surrounding hills for the length of the siege, and crossing it on foot was genuinely dangerous; residents ran between makeshift barriers of shipping containers and burned-out trams positioned to block the sightlines. The boulevard is an ordinary functioning street today, part of Sarajevo’s main tram route, and walking or riding along it is the simplest way to understand the distances and angles involved without needing a guide to explain them.

The Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Set in a Yugoslav-era modernist building near Marijin Dvor, the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina holds the country’s most direct permanent exhibition on the siege itself: everyday objects improvised out of necessity — stoves made from tin cans, water containers welded from scrap, a wheelchair built from bicycle parts — alongside photographs and documentation of daily life under fire. It is smaller and less polished than the National Museum, and that is part of what makes the objects legible: they are not curated as art, they are what people actually made to get through 1,425 days without water, gas or electricity for most of that time.

The War Childhood Museum

The War Childhood Museum, a short walk from Baščaršija, tells the siege through objects donated by people who were children in Sarajevo at the time, each paired with a short first-person account of what it meant to them: a toy, a piece of clothing, a diary. It won the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2018, the first Bosnian institution to receive it, and has since built a related collection from children in other conflicts. Because the objects are ordinary and the texts are short and specific, it is one of the more direct ways to understand what the siege meant for the roughly 1,600 children who did not survive it, and for those who did.

The roses in the pavement

Sarajevo roses are mortar shell impacts in the asphalt, later filled with red resin, marking spots where people were killed by shelling. They are scattered across the city rather than concentrated at one memorial — outside Markale market, along stretches of the centre, near tram stops — and most are unmarked beyond the resin itself. They are not a designated walking route and there is no map that lists them all; they turn up as you move through the city. The only relevant guidance is the obvious one: they are not stepped on.

Latin Bridge and the museum of a different date

At the corner by the Latin Bridge, Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, an event that helped trigger the First World War. The Sarajevo 1878-1918 museum occupies the corner building and covers that period specifically — Austro-Hungarian rule through to the assassination — not the 1990s siege. The two histories sit close together geographically and are sometimes conflated by visitors; they are 78 years and an entirely different conflict apart, and are worth keeping separate in your head as you walk between sites.

Putting a route together

Site	What it covers	Typical time	Entry
Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina	Daily life and improvised objects under siege	45-60 min	Modest admission fee
War Childhood Museum	First-person objects and accounts from children	45-60 min	Modest admission fee
Sniper Alley	The boulevard itself, on foot or by tram	20-30 min to walk a section	Free
Sarajevo roses	Scattered across the city centre	Seen in passing	Free
Tunnel of Hope, Butmir	The 800m tunnel, ~20m open, plus small museum	30-45 min	Around 10-15 KM
Gallery 11/07/95	Srebrenica, a separate and later chapter	45-60 min	Modest admission fee

The Historical Museum, the War Childhood Museum, Sniper Alley and the roses are all reachable independently within the city centre and don’t need a guide to be understood — the Historical Museum and War Childhood Museum can reasonably be combined in one morning, since both sit within walking distance of the centre. The Tunnel of Hope is the one site that benefits most from a guide, both for the distance to Butmir and for the context a guide can add on the spot.

A tour built specifically to explain the mechanics and chronology of the siege is a reasonable option if you’d rather have the sequence of events laid out by someone who can answer questions as you go, rather than piecing it together from museum panels alone.

Related and separate: Srebrenica

The genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995, in which more than 8,000 men and boys were killed, is a separate and later event from the siege of Sarajevo, though it happened within the same war and the same year the siege was still ongoing. The Gallery 11/07/95 in the city centre documents it through photography and testimony; the memorial at Potočari itself is roughly 140 km and two and a half to three hours from Sarajevo, and is a separate day’s visit, treated on its own page with its own guidance on how to visit respectfully.

Beyond the siege sites

Sarajevo’s Olympic history sits on the same hills that were used as siege positions, which is part of what makes the Trebević bobsleigh track — built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, then used as a shelling position during the siege, now abandoned and covered in graffiti — one of the more layered sites in the city.

If you want to understand the city beyond the war years, the Sarajevo 1984 Olympics legacy guide and the Baščaršija walking guide cover the Ottoman old town that predates all of this by over 400 years. For the traditional neighbourhoods that climbed the hillsides long before the war, a walking route through Sarajevo’s mahala neighbourhoods gives a sense of the city’s residential fabric away from the main sites.

For a wider view of how to approach the subject as a whole, see visiting Sarajevo respectfully and Bosnian war context for visitors, both written as companions to this page rather than repeats of it. If you’re deciding how much of your trip to give to this subject, the Sarajevo war museums compared guide sets the options against each other directly, and Sarajevo in one day or Sarajevo in two days show where these sites fit against the rest of the city.

Sites of the siege: questions people ask

How long did the siege of Sarajevo last?

1,425 days, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996. It is the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare.

How many people died during the siege?

Around 11,000 people were killed, including close to 1,600 children. Figures come from the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, which spent years cross-checking names.

What is the Tunnel of Hope and can you still visit it?

The Tunel spasa was an 800-metre hand-dug tunnel completed in 1993 under Sarajevo’s airport runway, the only route linking the besieged city to free territory. About 20 metres are open to visitors today, on the Butmir side, alongside a small museum. Entry costs around 10-15 KM.

What are the Sarajevo roses?

Mortar shell impacts in the pavement where people were killed, later filled with red resin. They mark specific deaths, not decoration, and are not walked on.

Is it possible to visit these sites without a guide?

The Historical Museum, the War Childhood Museum and the roses are all straightforward to visit independently in the city centre. The Tunnel of Hope is out near the airport in Butmir; it’s reachable by taxi or tram plus a walk, but most visitors join a guided tour that combines it with Sniper Alley and other sites in one trip.

Should this be called dark tourism?

No. These are sites of a recent, documented conflict that residents of Sarajevo lived through and lost family in. Visiting them is closer to visiting a war memorial than a tourist attraction, and is best approached that way: quietly, with attention to the facts, without treating the sites as a backdrop.

What happened on 28 June 1914 and is it connected to the siege?

Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the Latin Bridge, an event that helped trigger the First World War. It is a separate historical episode, 78 years before the siege began, and is covered by its own museum at the same corner.