About the Museum

The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: Zemaljski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine / Земаљски музеј Босне и Херцеговине) is located in central Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was established in 1888, having originally been conceived around 1850 and expanded in 1913 by the Czech architect Karel Pařík adding four symmetric pavilions that contain the departments of archaeology, ethnology, natural history, and a library. The museum is a cultural and scientific institution covering a wide range of areas including archaeology, art history, ethnology, geography, history and natural history. The Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript and the oldest Sephardic Jewish document in the world issued in Barcelona around 1350, containing the traditional Jewish Haggadah, is held at the museum. It has a library with 162,000 volumes. After being closed for several years due to heavy damage during the Bosnian War, the museum has re-opened and is in the process of mounting new and pre-existing exhibits. The museum was closed between 2012 and 2015 due to disagreements about funding.