Sarajevo Martyrs Cemetery, Bosnia & Hercegovina – Images by Jamie McDonald

I wrote about my time in beautiful Sarajevo last year here, but a vital journey that I neglected to mention is the steep climb to the Martyrs Cemetery. I didn’t know the cemetery existed until I went for a walk seeking a guesthouse that was up the road above the cemetery.

The New York Times mentioned the cemetery in 1994 when a month-long ceasfire allowed residents to visit graves of loved ones. Chuck Sudetic, the NYT author said that the cemetery resembled a ’stone fortress.’ A doctor that Sudetic spoke with, Teofik Handzic, said that before the war the graveyard was a park. A heart-wrenching reminder of the war across Sarajevo is the lack of green spaces – parks, median strips, soccer pitches – all became graveyards for their dead residents.

I had the opportunity to visit the cemetery without the need for UN troops to protect me and there is no better place to watch the sun set and observe the peace that has now settled on the city. If you do visit, and you should, please remember that this is not a museum, but a real cemetery with mourners visiting their relatives.