It is amazing to be at the exact location of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofie. I walked by the bridge and the spot several times during my trip and it never fails to excite the history geek in me. Gavrilo Princip shot from the bridge towards the building in 1914, and the Latin Bridge has become known at the Princip Bridge.
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| reading about the Latin Bridge |
There is a plaque in the building, which also houses the museum, marking the exact spot. The museum is very small-- one room-- but it has some great items.
It starts off explaining how Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austro-Hungarian control in 1878, in accordance with the Congress of Berlin. It has newspapers, photographs, medals from the turn of the century, as Sarajevo grew into an international city with a running tram system, an excellent education system, and a prolific artistic community.
It then goes into the assassination, laying out where Princip and his co-conspirators were as the Archduke's car was traveling back from the National Library, complete with lifesize models of the Archduke and Sofie. They have photos of the 7 men and they have Princip's trousers!
Perhaps the most interesting is that the actual gun used is on display (nearer to the number 12 in the photo below). It is such a simple piece of metal that started the cascade of events that generated the War to End All Wars.
The movie at the very beginning is wrth the time to watch the entirety, though the reenactment is a bit cheesey, it still shows footage filmed seconds before the assassination and the chaos immediately afterwards. Truly astonishing moment in history.
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