Stari most (The bridge is not so important - Education is the key in this town. If you're brought up and educated to hate the other side ...)

Until the Bosnian war of 1992-95, Mostar was probably the most ethnically integrated city in all of former Yugoslavia. But the city became a laboratory for experiments in extreme ethnic engineering.

The result is that Mostar mutated into the most divided town in Bosnia, a triumph for the Croatian nationalists who, with their Serbian counterparts, sought to destroy the city and to erase Bosnia-Herzegovina from the map of Europe.

The most vivid symbol of that Croatian triumph came just over 10 years ago, when a couple of well-aimed Croatian artillery shells brought the city's world-famous Old Bridge, the gravity-defying masterpiece of Ottoman Turk architecture erected in 1566, tumbling into the fast green waters of the Neretva.

The bridge defined Mostar. Its destruction seemed to augur the city's death.

But today, after years of painstaking work and at a cost of £5m, the Old Bridge stands again, a perfect replica built of the same creamy local limestone, a single graceful span stretching 90ft (27 metres) across the ravine and suspended 60ft (18 metres) above the river.

www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/23/iantraynor