Mostar owes its name and its shape to a crossing. The bridge built here in the sixteenth century, under Ottoman rule, spans the gorge of the Neretva in a single high arch of pale stone, flanked by two towers, and the old town grew along the approaches on either bank: paved lanes, the coppersmiths' bazaar, mosques, hammams and merchants' houses stepping down towards the water. In November 1993, during the war, the bridge was shelled and collapsed into the river. Its reconstruction became a project of international scope, combining archaeology, underwater recovery of the fallen blocks, quarrying of the same local stone and the use of period building techniques. The rebuilt bridge was reopened in 2004, and the old bridge area is inscribed on the World Heritage List. The town today lives with both realities: an intensely visited historic centre, where divers still leap from the parapet into the cold green water as they have for generations, and a city where the memory of division remains close to the surface. Filmed in 4K, from the water, the lanes and the air, the programme suits strands on history, heritage and post-conflict reconstruction.
