War Childhood Museum

About War Childhood Museum

Museum in Sarajevo

The War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo's Logavina quarter, near Baščaršija, opened in January 2017 and tells the experiences of children who lived through the Bosnian War through their own belongings, video testimonies and recorded memories. In 2018 it won the Council of Europe Museum Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the museum world, as part of the European Museum of the Year Award. The idea began in 2010, when Jasminko Halilović, himself a war child, used an online platform to collect short memories from young adults who had grown up under siege. More than a thousand arrived, and he published them as a book in 2013. Realising that many still kept objects tied to those memories, he started collecting them with a team of young professionals. Around fifty objects are on show at a time: a toy, a school notebook, a party dress, a letter, a pair of shoes, each with a short story written by its owner and backed by photographs, audio and video. It is not about armies and battles but about childhood itself and how it carried on regardless, and it is one of the most moving museums in Sarajevo.

Where:

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Flights to Sarajevo