Corridor: Diagonal Road
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vishegrad
Type: Industrial Site
Epoch: Middle Ages
Theme:
World Heritage:

The Mehmed-pasa Sokolovic Bridge was built between 1571 and 1577 over the river Drina
where the road linking Bosnia with Istanbul ran (known as the "Carigradska dzada” or road to the Imperial city). The construction of the bridge was entrusted to the great court architect
Kodza Mimar Sinan, not only the leading architect of the Ottoman Empire but one of the
greatest builders in the world. The benefactor who funded the construction was Mehmed
pasa Sokolovic, Grand Vizier to three sultans from 1565 to 1579.
The stone from which the bridge was built was quarried in Banja, about five kilometres
downstream on the right bank of the Drina. A wooden tower, used as a guard-room, with a
passage beneath closed by massive oak doors on both sides, formerly stood on the middle of the bridge. The date of its construction is unknown, but it was pulled down in 1886. The
tower was equipped with several small cannons known as sibe. On the bridge itself, there were two chronograms engraved with the years 971/1571 and 985/1577 respectively.
The bridge is one of the most magnificent works of architecture of the fifteenth to nineteenth
century in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The part of the bridge that spans the river consists of
eleven arched openings, of which the end opening on the right bank rests on two retaining
walls with the smallest span of 5.20 m

Council of Europe,RPSEE