Mostar visitor guide

What Mostar is

Mostar is a city of about 105,000 people in the municipality (2013 census), in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Neretva river runs through it, a fast, clear green river in a valley with bare, pale mountains on either side. The Old Town sits on both banks, joined by one stone bridge.

That bridge, Stari Most, is the reason most people come. It was finished in 1566 and designed by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin, a pupil of the better-known Sinan. A single stone arch rises about 24 m above the water. It was destroyed by shelling on 9 November 1993, during the Croat-Bosniak War, rebuilt from 2001, and reopened on 23 July 2004. UNESCO listed it in 2005 as part of the Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar.

This is an independent guide, not an official tourism site. We link to official pages where they exist and say plainly where we could not check something. Entry fees marked as coming from a secondary source were not on an official page, so treat them as a guide and confirm them at the door.

Why go

The bridge looks as good as its pictures, but it is only the start. Behind it are narrow cobbled lanes, mosques, stone houses with small courtyards and cafes on terraces over the river. It is a place to walk slowly, drink a coffee and look at the water. Keep your expectations realistic: the bridge and the lanes around it can be seen in a couple of hours, and in summer they are busy in the middle of the day when the tour groups arrive. The bridge itself was shelled to destruction in 1993, so the story of the 1990s is part of any honest visit. We cover it on the war history page, and we suggest reading it before you arrive.

It is also hot. Mostar sits at about 60 m elevation, and its average high is about 33 C in July and August, with a record of 46.2 C. If you visit in summer, plan your walking for the morning or evening. Our page on the best time to visit goes through the seasons.

Featured tours

These are the trips we would shortlist, with the figures taken from GetYourGuide on 15 October 2026. The cards show the current from price, rating and length. The day tours page compares all of them by departure city.

The main sights

The Old Bridge is free to look at from either bank. Allow time to see it from both sides and from the lanes below. In summer, local divers jump from it. A formal diving competition has run every summer since 1968, and Mostar has been a stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series since 2015. The UK government warns that diving from the bridge is dangerous and has caused serious injuries and deaths, so watch the professionals and do not jump. Details are on the Old Bridge page.

The Old Town (Stari Grad) is the cobbled area either side of the bridge. The Koski Mehmed Pasha Mosque lets you in, and climb the minaret, for a fee of about 10 KM (a secondary source; check on the day), while the courtyard is free. The Old Bridge Museum, in the Tara tower beside the bridge, is run by the Museum of Herzegovina and covers the bridge and its reconstruction; a secondary source gives 8 KM. The Crooked Bridge (Kriva Cuprija) is a small stone bridge over a side stream and is free. See the Old Town page.

War history. The Museum of War and Genocide Victims is on Maršala Tita Street. We could not verify its fee, so check before you go. For a guided view, the war history page explains what to read first, and one of the tours above is a 2.5 hour walking tour on the subject.

Day trips nearby. Four places are within an easy drive of Mostar:

• Kravice waterfalls: a 28 m curtain of water on the Trebižat river, about 40 km west. Entry is 20 KM for adults at the official list, and in June to September the site is open until 22:00.
• Blagaj: a tekke (a Sufi dervish house) beneath a cliff at the source of the Buna river, about 12 km and 15 minutes away.
• Počitelj: a fortified hillside village, a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 25 to 30 km south.
• Međugorje: a Catholic pilgrimage village about 28 km away, which draws more than a million visitors a year.

The nearby hub has the full list.

Planning: day trip or overnight

A day trip suits you if you are based in Dubrovnik, Split or Sarajevo and have one day. The group tours from the Croatian coast run 10 to 12 hours, mostly in a vehicle, and share the day between Mostar and one or two other stops. You see the bridge, the main lanes and perhaps lunch. You do not get the evening, when the crowds thin.

An overnight stay costs you a night but gives you the quiet hours. You can see the bridge in the evening, take a half-day trip to Kravice or Blagaj in the morning, and travel on. Staying also makes the bus practical, since you are no longer racing a tour schedule. The where to stay page has the areas, and the Mostar itinerary lays out one and two day plans.

Getting here. From Dubrovnik you can join a tour, take a bus or drive, and each has trade-offs set out in Mostar from Dubrovnik. The getting there page covers Split, Sarajevo and the rest. The train from Sarajevo takes about 2 hours, with two departures each way a day, and FlixBus lists a minimum of 3 h 30 from Split. Check current timetables before you plan around either.

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A note on what we could not check

Some practical details are not on any official page we could read. We have left out opening hours for most Mostar sights, the fees for the Karađoz Bey Mosque and the war museum, and current bus fares, rather than guess. Where a figure comes from a travel guide and not an official source, we say so. When you plan a visit, confirm hours and fees with the sight itself, particularly in winter, when hours change.