National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

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. In 1913, the museum building was expanded by the Czech architect Karel Pařík who designed a structure of four symmetric pavilions with a facade in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The four pavilions contain the departments of archaeology, ethnology, natural history, and a library. 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 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. Having remained open for its entire history including during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, the museum was closed between 2012 and 2015 due to disagreements about funding. The museum is a cultural and scientific institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Though conceived in 1850 as an idea by the Ottomans when they ruled Sarajevo, it was not until the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which captured modern day Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Ottomans in 1878) that the museum was officially established and built. Part of the Austro-Hungarian policy goals was to raise literacy levels and maintain European-standard education. Under their administration, a Museum Society was formed on February 1, 1888, in order to further this agenda in the form of a museum. The first director of the museum was Mr. Kosta Hörmann, an advisor to the Austro-Hungarian government.