Reconstruction of the bridge in Višegrad, the famous bridge of the great Ottoman vizier Mehmed-Pasha Sokolović, will be completed by the end of November this year. Restoration and conservation works are being conducted since April 2013, in which the Turkish Agency for Reconstruction and Development TIKA invested around five million EUR.
Nothing was done during the reconstruction of the bridge without negotiations with institutions for protection of national and cultural monuments, and the works are being carefully executed by the Turkish construction company Er-u, which was also engaged on the reconstruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar.
Setting of cubes at the access roads to the bridge on the left bank of Drina is currently in progress. Namely, around 800 square meters of granite cubes are being set. As a reminder, at the time of the construction of the bridge, 438 years ago, Turkish cobblestones were set, which were later replaced with cubes extracted from several quarries after the Second World War. The cubes are set only at the beginning of the old bridge and the other works are also done, such as the replacement of damaged blocks of tuff on the fence and the replacement of installed lighting.
The bridge is a testimony to numerous wars and bad times, since the far 1571 when its construction started until 1577 when it was completed, through the times which Andrić described in his Nobel Prize award-winning novel. Nevertheless, the bridge in Višegrad still witnessed to many beautiful moments of Višegrad, the surroundings, and the entire B&H.
The bridge is nowadays living up to its former glory. It is one of the most significant monuments in B&H built in the Ottoman Empire period. It is a work of the greatest Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan and among six bridges on the UNESCO’s world heritage list. Regardless of all happenings in the history of Bosnia, the bridge is still a testimony to joint culture of the two peoples.
(Source: klix.ba)
