Beyond the Connection: The Bridge on the Drina

The Bridge on the Drina was written by internationally famous Ivo Andric, who was born in 1892 in Travnik, Bosnia, and spent a part of his youth in Visegrad with his mother. The Bridge of the Drina is an important work that has been able to relate past experiences, hopes, and aspirations. In this work, the East-West relationship from the strongest periods of the Ottoman Empire was transmitted to the reader through this bridge. This work, whose author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961, has been printed many times in different languages. The bridge itself was built over the Drina River, the largest tributary of the Sava River. The stories of different people, such as Serbs, Muslims, and Jews, who lived there because of the years of wars between the Ottomans and Austria and other uprisings, were set in the town of Visegrad around this river and on this bridge. With this bridge, Bosnia was connected to Serbia and further afield, to other parts of the Ottoman Empire and even to Istanbul. The stone bridge, built on 11 arches, took five years to build and was completed in 1571. Most of the stories mentioned in this work were realized there as well. This stone bridge was built by a Serbian-born boy who crossed the river from the village of Sokolovic from the opposite side. He was called Sokollu Mehmet Pasha years later, the grand vizier in the Ottoman Empire. With the construction of the bridge, different structures such as the stone house and the police station were built in different periods. The Bridge of the Drina conveys the deep waters of the past, the stories filled with hope, longing, and loss, in a sad and effective way.

Keywords: Austrian Empire, Bridge, Environmental elements, Ivo Andric, Kapiya, Ottoman Empire, Piva River, Place in architecture, Sarajevo, Sava River, Sokollu Mehmet Pasha, Sokolovic village, Stone bridge, Stone house, Tara River, The Bridge on the Drina, Time in architecture, Tradition, Trovnik Town, Visegrad.