Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge

The Bridge on the Drina or Mehmed Paša - Sokolović Bridge ( Serbo-Croatian Most Mehmed - Pase Sokolovića, Serbian Cyrillic Мост Мехмед - паше Соколовића, Turkish Mehmet Paşa Sokullu Köprüsü ) in the city of Visegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1571-1577 built / 78. Since 2007, she is on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

As a builder applies the Janissary Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, who came from a village near Visegrad and ten years old, came into the boys' reading. He is said to have ordered the construction in order to prove to his homeland a service. On the central stele of the bridge two text panels are mounted on which Ivo Andric 's novel to be read according to the following inscription in Ottoman Turkish:

The design of the bridge is attributed to the Ottoman architect Sinan. The bridge consists of eleven sheets and has a length of about 180 meters. The now closed to car traffic lane is six feet wide. The large deck on the central pillar ( kapija ) served the residents of the town Visegrad for centuries as a meeting place and the changing rulers in the city as a checkpoint on the road from Sarajevo to Serbia. 1914 three arches of the bridge over the green Drina River were destroyed by the withdrawing Austro-Hungarian occupation. Earlier, an explosive device had been attached. In 1940, the bridge was reconstructed. The damage of the Second World War had been resolved in 1951. Today, the increased by damming the river at Perućac water level threatens the building fabric.

Ivo Andric, who for his oeuvre received the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature, describes the history of the bridge and the city in his 1945 published novel The Bridge on the Drina. The bridge is also the subject of the novel How the Soldier repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanisic.