Old Bridge

The rocks here constrict the channel of the Neretva, so one high stone span could link the banks where the river usually divided the city. The crossing was built by order of the Sultan as a permanent road across the water; the steps rise to the arch, and the parapet runs above the swift current. The current stonework repeats the former shape down to its small irregularities, although many stone blocks were cut anew. The name Old Bridge remained with it, along with the memory of the former arch.

Sixteen-year-old Emir Balić spent almost three hours walking along the top of the arch and could not bring himself to jump. He grew up by the Neretva, trained from childhood on low ledges, and knew how to enter the water feet first. The Old Bridge was another level. To refuse meant returning to the bank to the ridicule of his peers; to make a mistake meant hitting the water after a fall from a height of about twenty meters. Balić jumped feet first. Later, he recalled that his whole body hurt when he got home.

The bridge stands here because the rocky banks of the Neretva draw closer at this point. In fifteen sixty-six, the architect Hayruddin, by order of Sultan Suleiman, completed a high single-span crossing. People gained a permanent route across the river, and local young men gained a place for a test that could not be repeated from an ordinary bank. Written accounts link jumps to this crossing as early as the seventeenth century. Over time, two disciplines developed: entering the water feet first and a headfirst jump known as the “Mostar swallow.”

A few months after his first jump, Balić dared to attempt the “Mostar swallow.” He pushed off from the parapet, stretched his body almost horizontally, and only just before the water dropped headfirst. The fear did not disappear: Balić said he feared failure more than injury. He did not make his living from the bridge. He worked as a projectionist and a stuntman, and here he trained and competed. Balić jumped from the Old Bridge more than a thousand times and won the annual competitions thirteen times.

On November ninth, nineteen ninety-three, the arch from which he jumped collapsed into the Neretva after shelling. The new bridge opened on July twenty-third, two thousand four. The builders repeated the shape of the former crossing, its stonework, and even its small geometric irregularities. They retained the name “Old Bridge,” although most of the current blocks were cut anew.

At the opening, Balić intended to jump one more time. The writer Predrag Matvejević talked him out of it: before them stood an exact reconstruction, but not the stone from which the jumper's fame had begun. Balić handed the torch to the young Lorens Listo, and Listo jumped in his place. Later, Listo also won thirteen times and, having drawn level with Balić, stopped competing. The annual jumps continue from the current parapet; Emir Balić himself never jumped from the restored Old Bridge.