About the Museum

Museum of Literature and Theater Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Muzej književnosti i pozorišnih umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine) is a literary art museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was established under the name Museum of Literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1961 on the idea of then curator of literary collections in the Museum of Sarajevo, writer Razija Handžić, the future director. In 1970, the Theater Department was founded and added to the Museum of Literature. The idea was conceived around 1955, and gained traction when prominent writer and future Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, Ivo Andrić, decided that the original manuscript of his novel The Bridge on the Drina be kept in Sarajevo. The museum is located in the Baščaršija neighborhood in the heart of Sarajevo, in the older of two Despić family house, built in the middle of the 19th century, and whose members donated it to City of Sarajevo.