Dobrinja suburb

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You are in the heart of the most devastated suburb of Sarajevo, by the old front line. UN observers at the nearby airport would watch as grenades, bullets and shrapnel shredded the houses in the most violent street-to-street fighting in the city. In the grass beside the car lie two mines, as the red scrawl on the pavement points out. If you zoom in, you can see one - if you know what to look for. There are 500,000 more within a forty mile radius. You keep off the grass in Sarajevo. Wander into one of the blown-out houses and you're likely to trip a wire attached to another one, left by departing owners or invaders (it doesn't matter which). Victims are offhandedly described as 'red mist'.

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City centre

(All the other scenes are linked to here) The centre of Sarajevo is marked by this broad highway - the infamous 'Sniper Alley' - and four main buildings. The twin towers and the white government tower were important mortar targets, while the yellow Holiday Inn escaped relatively unscathed, largely because it housed most of the foreign journalists. The first bullets of the war were fired from the Holiday Inn at demonstrators outside the government tower; the incident was seen live on national TV.

Throughout the war, the city was closely surrounded, so bullets and shells came from all directions.

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By the government tower

On the far side of the government tower, beside the burnt-out Marlboro cigarette factory, lies this shelled bus. It's a common enough sight in Bosnia. Many gutted and splintered vehicles in the city were used as clumsy visual and physical barriers against snipers. Some streets, especially those near the river, were festooned with sheeting, so snipers couldn't see when anyone was walking past. Needless to say it didn't stop them firing.

Although this bus is an obvious exception, much of the damage to the city is in fact a result of fire rather than violent impact.Of the many shells which landed on the city every day, a large number were incendiary devices.

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By the twin towers

The white church ahead survived the seige almost unscathed. Behind you, the twin towers are now used as administrative offices by the UN, with radio antennae strung between them. They remain the highest buildings in the city, despite determined efforts to destroy them.

100 yards down the road, in the direction the UN personnel carrier is facing, lies the hottest target in the city. Owing to its open and strategic position, more people died by sniper bullet at that T-junction than anywhere else.

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By the Miljacka river

The Bosnian Serbs' capital - a small skiing village called Pale - lies just five miles away in the hills on the other side of the river. Its proximity, not to mention its existence, is regarded as an outrage by the Sarajevan Muslims.

Trams ran sporadically during the war, and all UN military vehicles were white, as opposed to the international peace-keeping implementation force's (IFOR - now SFOR) military green. An IFOR 'hummer' personnel carrier is driving past.

The large building facing the river is the National Library.

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Inside the library

Built in pseudo-Moorish style by the Austrians in 1894, the National Library was widely regarded as the most beautiful building in Sarajevo, containing many decorative elements in its central atrium, on the staircase and ceremonial wings.

Subject to intensive shelling, it caught fire on August 25 1992 - 100 years to the day since the start of its construction. The Sarajevans remember the day by the ashes of books flying above the city. It burnt uncontrollably for four days; all shelves and decorative plasterwork were destroyed and the pillars cracked open and shed scallops of stone. Since the war finished, several concerts and art exhibitions have been held in the ruins.

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