about SARAJEVO

Sarajevo is capital city of (the state of) Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is its administrative, economic, cultural, educational (university) and sport center. The city of Sarajevo is unit of local self-governance, which consists of four city municipalities: Old City, Center, New City and New Sarajevo.

Area:  141,5 km/2
Population:  419,030

Brief history

The Sarajevo valley has a long and rich history dating back to the Neolithic period, when the Butmir Culture flourished. Several Illyrian settlements existed in the area before it was conquered by Rome in 9 CE. During Roman times, a town named Aquae Sulphurae ("sulfuric thermal spring") existed on the location of the present-day Sarajevo suburb of Ilidža. After the Romans, the Goths settled the area, followed by the Slavs in the 7th century. The settlement Vrh-Bosna existed in the valley as a Slavic citadel from 1263 until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire's warriors in 1429. Under Isa-Beg Isaković, the first Ottoman governor of the Bosnia Province, the settlement was established as a city, named Bosna-Saraj, around the citadel in 1461. The name Sarajevo is derived from Turkish saray ovas?, meaning the field around saray.