Visegrad

The famous bridge in Visegrad across the Drina River. It was built at the end of the 16th century by the court architect Sinan on the orders of Grand Vezier Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic.

The writer Ivo Andric (1892-1975) spent his childhood in Visegrad. The picture shows the classroom of the school he attended.

The bridge is a masterpiece of the classical Ottoman period. It is the main "character" in the Andric's novel The Bridge on the Drina.

The common people remember and tell of what they are able to grasp and what they are able to transform into legend. Enything else passes them by without deeper trace, with the dumb indifference of nameless natural phenomena, which do not touch the imagination or remain in the memory. This hard and long building process was for them a foreign task undertaken at another's expense. Only when as the fruit of this effort, the great bridge arose, men began to remember details and to embroider the creation of a real, skillfully built and lasting bridge with fabulous tales which they well knew how to weave and to remember. (Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina)