At Mejdan
At Mejdan is a park that is
located on the left bank of the Miljacka River, between the bridges, Latinska
Ćuprija and Ćumurija. This green space is located in the heart of old Sarajevo
and the area, which takes up about 2,500 m2, has changed its name and function
many times over the years.
Right after the founding of
Sarajevo, this was where public punishments were carried out, and for this
reason it was called Sijaset Mejdan. In the second half of the 15th century it
served as a horse track and a place for trading horses and up to that time it
was called At Mejdan (at = horse; mejdan = square). In 1544, Hajji Alija
Bakr-Baba built a mosque in the part of town close to Ćumurija Bridge, while
Hajji Ismail Misrija built a medresa (religious educational facility) on the
eastern side of the mosque’s courtyard in 1741/1742. Soon after, Abdulah Efendi
Kantamirija had a library built nearby and, by the end of the 18th century, At
Mejdan had become an important educational and cultural center.
It began to lose its original
function at the beginning of the 19th century, as Austro-Hungarian occupation
saw the destruction of objects that had stood here, and the square was renamed
after Baron Josip Filipović, Commander of the occupational forces that arrived
in 1878. By 1905 the square was joined to the nearby Vojni Trg (military
square) and the entire area was renamed Trg Franje Josipa, after the
Austro-Hungarian Emperor.
Between the First and Second
World Wars, the park bore the name of Czar Dušan, the first Serbian Czar, and
it officially became a park in 1925. During the Second World War it was named
after the writer, Edhem Mulabdić, and following liberation in 1945 it was again
named after Dušan Silni ("Dušan the Mighty”). The name, At Mejdan, was
reinstated in 1993.
The center of the At Mejdan Complex is now dominated by a music pavilion which was built in 1913, as designed by Josip Pospišil. It was destroyed during the Second World War and then totally rebuilt in 2004. In 2015, the western section of the park was opened to serve as At Mejdan’s protected archeological area, which includes the renovated Bakr-Baba’s Mosque, remains of the mekteb (religious primary school), a courtyard and Misrija’s medresa.