The Bljesak.info portal team visited the managment of the Herzegovina Museum and the departments operating in the Herzegovina Museum, which host numerous foreign and domestic tourists.
A large part of the history of Mostar and Herzegovina can be seen in the buildings, so it is definitely recommended that you set aside time to visit this institution in order to get to know the rich history of this region.
The hosts we talked to and who introduced us to part of the Museum’s rich collection are Ibrica Dizdar, senior curator of the Museum of Herzegovina and Aner Duraković, curator of the Museum of Herzegovina. The Museum of Herzegovina was founded in 1950 with the aim of finding, collecting, preserving and presenting to the public the rich cultural and historical heritage of Mostar and Herzegovina. Within its collections, the museum has tens of thousands of museum objects, documents, photographs and other museum material.
The wealth, diversity and creative creativity can be seen in the Museum of Herzegovina in Mostar, which has become a treasure of cultural and historical heritage, a custodian of memory and an institution that gives specificity to the Mostar environment, which is cultural heritage and the possibility of its presentation through various forms of cultural life and activities. The Museum’s administration is located on the site of the “Džemal Bijedić” Memorial House, near Šehitluk, and the same institution is available to visitors and researchers for scientific and journalistic research.
The departments of the Museum of Herzegovina in Mostar that we visited are the memorial house of Džemal Bijedić, the memorial house of Svetozar Ćorović, the Tara tower (department of the Old Bridge Museum) and the Interpretation Center Mostar. On April 22, 1981, the Džemal Bijedić Memorial House was opened as a subsidiary of the Museum of Herzegovina. The Memorial House of Džemal Bijedić is an example of the architecture and culture of the population’s lifestyle over the past three centuries. The house is a complex consisting of two buildings and two courtyards. 12,300 museum items were collected for this exhibition (photographs, albums, three-dimensional objects, letters, reports, manuscripts, filmstrips, press, mourning books in our and foreign embassies, etc.). In the memorial house there is a combined exhibition, which contains archaeological, ethnological and library material.
The Šantić Memorial Room is located in the Svetozar Ćorović Memorial House, dedicated to the life and literary work of this great Bosnian writer. In the room there is a display with many of the author’s literary works, as well as objects from his private life, such as a desk on which many of his works were created. In addition to Ćorović and Šantić, this house also has an exhibition dedicated to the Mostar writer Hamza Huma.
Next to the Old Bridge, there is a department of the Museum of Herzegovina dedicated to the history of the development of the city of Mostar and the restoration of the Old Bridge, which operates under the name “Museum Stari Most”. The “Old Bridge Museum” with an observation deck located in the Tara tower complex, on the left bank of the Neretva, presents the reconstruction project (1999-2004) of the bridge from the 16th century with the associated towers Tara and Halebija. Part of the museum setting is an authentic archeological site below the level of the tower’s approach, while on the floors of the tower movable archaeological material, archival and architectural documentation are exhibited. The Museum of Herzegovina Mostar consists of the “MUM Interpretation Center” department.
The goal of the MuM Interpretation Center (museum in Mostar) is, in addition to the valorization of cultural heritage, to establish an integral and cultural system that will guide visitors to all original locations and contents. The exhibited objects in this department of the Museum of Herzegovina realize, with other narrative elements, the story of tradition, customs, culture of housing and culture of living in Mostar and the region. Visiting hours to the Džemal Bijedić Memorial House are on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., to the Svetozar Ćorović Memorial House by appointment (phone number 036 551 602 or email info@muzejhercegovine.com), to the Interpretation Museum from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. except Mondays (from November 1 to 1.4 on weekdays from 9 am to 3 pm), while the Old Bridge museum department can be visited on week days from 10 am to 6 pm (in the period from 1 April to 1 November).
