Bayeux has its tapestry. Pisa has its leaning tower. Mostar had a bridge. It, too, was a thing of beauty — a span to swoon over, visited by 2m tourists a year. They came to marvel at the medieval town and its clear green river, but crossing the 16th-century Stari Most, or Old Bridge, was the highlight — everyone treading carefully over stones worn glassy by the soles of five centuries.

Yet it was more than decorative, or even practical: the bridge at Mostar was a symbol of the unity of Bosnia, the ability of Muslims, Croats and Serbs to share the country in peace.

Then, in 1993, it disappeared — blown to pieces by a Croatian tank in the civil war.

So, when a replica of the bridge was opened on Friday, it wasn’t just portentous ceremonial. The symbolism for the locals, in a country still recovering from the bitterest of wars, hardly needs explanation.

The message to the outside world was just as important. The citizens of Bosnia have come back from the brink; now they would like us to come back and visit.

Their plea was carried to London recently by the High Representative of the UN to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown. He had a tough sell. The horrors of 1991-95 are still the first thing most of us associate with the country. Not surprisingly, the High Rep-cum-tour rep had to fend off questions such as “Is it safe?” (yes); “Does it feel like a battered war zone?” (well, in places); “What about the mines?” (they are there in some areas, but clearly marked); and, oddly, “Why isn’t there a motorway?”

The opening ceremony, after years of meticulous work requiring a budget of £10m, has inevitably led to a flurry of flashback footage and syrupy sound bites on our screens — but will it be enough to tempt anyone into taking a holiday in Bosnia? And if it is, what will they find? Last week, I went to see.

AFTER ARRIVING at the smart new Sarajevo airport, I hail a cab and ask for Kob Bibana, a restaurant that overlooks the city. We speed off up steep lanes, winding through fields as green as England’s, stopping at the bottom of what looks like a little orchard.

“There...” he says. The driver is pointing to a small cabin through the trees.

“You what?” I say.

“Yes,” he smiles. “There.”

Sure enough, at the end of a garden path, I find alfresco trestle tables where groups of people are laughing and drinking. Cat Stevens’s Lady D’Arbanville is playing, and the pine-scented air is suffused with the delicious smell of food being cooked on a wood-burning stove.

I sit at a table overlooking the whole of Sarajevo. The air is super-still. Below me are red-roofed houses, pencil-shaped minarets and city trams caterpillaring their way along the riverbank. It’s stunning, and would take my breath away if I didn’t have a mouth full of Sarajevska beer.

In the far distance is a television tower — it looks like a giant sawn-off fly swat and I swear I’ve seen it before. Then I remember: maybe 10 years ago on the news, an ordinary-looking hillside puffed with clouds of bluey smoke, another bad day in Sarajevo.

The waiter brings me a block of Post-it Notes — the menu. On the top note, the words BIFSTEK and RAMSTEK are written in capitals.

The sky is turning orange in the summer dusk. Here I am in Sarajevo; it’s bizarre. I feel utterly relaxed. And not a little special.

After a £1 taxi ride, I arrive at the western end of the Ferhadija. It’s the first wide pedestrian street in a connected series that runs through the old city centre — not just a walkway, but also a timeline from the 19th century into the 15th.

There are hordes of night-time promenaders. Cafes line the lamp-lit thoroughfare and its myriad side streets, with waiters scurrying this way and that. More than 200,000 people fled during the siege, but half have returned, and the place feels incredibly alive. These people have 11 words for “enjoy”, and you can see why: the famous Sarajevo spirit is palpable.

Underfoot, the tidy paving slabs con-vert abruptly into ancient crazy paving, which means I’ve crossed from the Austro-Hungarian part of town into the older Ottoman quarter. It’s a startling transition. Behind me are the large mansions built during the Austrian occupation in the 19th century; in front are single-storey wooden shops, redolent of Arab souks. The narrow lanes are filled with traders in copper, leather and woodwork. The air is heavy with the smell of wood smoke, and all around, people collide in exchanges of greeting.

My hotel, the Villa Orient, is at the end of an alley. It’s intimate and comfortable. I leave the balcony doors to my room open and, as unlikely as it may seem, I fall asleep to the sound of Georgian bagpipes — coming from a nearby street festival.

THE NEXT day, I explore more of the city. I visit a small block that’s home to a mosque, an Orthodox church, a synagogue and a cathedral — and I wonder that Sarajevo was at the heart of such intense religious hatred. I need to ask about it.

My guide is a sassy student with long black hair, fiery eyes and a short T-shirt that reveals her navel. She clearly loves her city. People assume it to be in per- petual strife, she says, but Sarajevo, and the whole of Bosnia, has been famously multiethnic and tolerant of different faiths for most of its history.

“Look,” she tells me, “I’m a Muslim, but I don’t wear a veil. And you can see my bellybutton! In Sarajevo, you can’t tell what religion someone is just by looking at them. We speak the same language, we have the same surnames, our accents are the same. We’ve always lived side by side. It wasn’t until the war that some of us learnt the religions of our neighbours and friends.”

She shows me into the city’s oldest Orthodox church, a squat building wider than it is long. On the upper floor are carved wooden lattices that were borrowed as a style from the modesty screens used in Islamic religious architecture. “There is so much to show and tell,” she says, “but most foreigners just want to know about the war.”

“Oh, er, really?” I reply, reddening ever so slightly.

I know we are near the site of the famous massacre that killed 68 market shoppers and wounded 220 — the one that kick-started the Dayton peace accords. I guess she can sense my curiosity.

“Don’t worry,” she says, with a sideways smile, “I’ll show you the site of the massacre in a moment.” She’s not offended, but I wonder if I’m not a ghost at the feast. Or, more precisely, a ghost after the dishes have been washed.

That night, I wander back to my hotel — this time, the street festival has given itself over to Viennese waltzes — and I’m approached by a group of teenagers. In east London, I’d be edgy, but here they smile, kick me their football, shout hello and invite me to play.

IN THE morning, it’s time to leave the city — an option Sarajevans were denied during the 3-year siege. After just a few minutes’ drive, I’m among sleepy southern European villages and steeply wooded mountains threaded through with ice-clear streams. Mostar, here I come.

I visit the Neretva valley on my way, and trek high up in the Bjelasnica Mountains with a mountain guide. We climb more than 800 yards through pine forests and gaze over the peaks, bald helmets of bare rock. We’re briefly joined by a herd of grazing goats as we look down at the clear green waters of the River Neretva. Then it’s time to go to town.

In the eastern part of medi- eval Mostar, at the top of a steep hill, is the Museum of Herzegovina. Its random collection of pictures and pots is endearingly underwhelming, but downstairs is a cluttered room with cinema seats and a five-minute film that has me grafted to the spot.

There is no commentary; classical music strains from puny speakers. The first pictures are sweeping aerial views of the city and its centrepiece bridge, taken from a helicopter in the 1980s. Then the quality worsens and I see a ruined cityscape. Ninety per cent of the buildings are destroyed. It looks like Dresden in 1945, but this is the old town of Mostar just a decade ago, besieged by Serb forces. An amateur-video close-up of the bridge captures the first shell smacking the arch. I wince. Another shell hits, splintering the ancient stone. Then another. And another. Debris spews in all directions until finally the span trembles and plunges into the river.

IT’S A relief to emerge back into the sunshine, to see a group of children spilling home from school, men sipping Turkish coffee at a street cafe and a knot of British tourists cooling themselves with an ice cream.

I look up and notice a halo of mortar damage above a smashed balcony. A local catches me gazing as if it’s a facial scar — I feel guilty. It’s hard to believe that this is the town from the film, as so much has been restored or exactly rebuilt. Streetlife and shopfronts are busy, the medieval muddle is attractive again, but it needs longer still before the sprucing-up squads reach the areas beyond the tourist- drawing heart. Nearer the bridge, workmen are busy dismantling scaffolding and pouring runny concrete into the gaps between the newly laid cobbles.

And there it is: the graceful single span of the new Stari Most. Today, it wears a fringe of white fabric strips that twist in the breeze, a veil for the forthcoming ceremony. It’s a lovely sight, serene and symbolic — but it’s also new and unweathered, uniformly coloured and sharply angled. Walking onto it, I quickly pass from the slippery, polished cobbles of the original path onto the rough stone of the reconstruction.

It’ll take time for all the buildings to be restored, for the wounds of war to heal and for tourists to return in large numbers — and even longer before the stones of the Stari Most are scuffed smooth again. But there’s a hopeful future for Bosnia now there is water under the bridge again at Mostar.

Richard Green travelled as a guest of Austrian Airlines and Green Visions

Travel brief

Getting there: there are no direct flights from the UK or Ireland to Sarajevo, although several airlines offer convenient connections via a European hub. Ebookers (0870 814 0000, www.ebookers.co.uk) has flights with Austrian Airlines from Heathrow via Vienna; from £299. TravelSelect (0871 222 3213, www.travelselect.co.uk) has flights from Birmingham, Newcastle and Edinburgh with Austrian/Lufthansa; from £296. In Ireland, Ebookers (01 488 3507, www.ebookers.ie) has flights from Dublin via Vienna; from €488.

If you are holidaying on the Croatian coast, a day excursion to Mostar is offered by most tour operators and local agents. Expect to pay about £25.

Where to stay: in Sarajevo, the Villa Orient (00 387-33 232702; doubles from £69) is quiet, relaxing and perfectly located in the old town. Pansion Bascarsija (33 232185; doubles from £27) is a comfy old-town B&B; or try Hotel Casa Grande (33 639280; doubles from £50), out in the spa suburb of Iliza. In Mostar, the best option is the Hotel Bevanda (36 332332), a new four-star with doubles from £82.

Tour operator: Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711, www.regent-holidays.co.uk) can tailor-make trips. Three nights in Sarajevo start at £527pp, half-board, including flights from Heathrow via Budapest (regional connections from £60 extra).

Excursions: guided day hikes into the surrounding mountains cost £25pp with Green Visions (00 387 33 717290, www.greenvisions.ba).

Best guidebook: Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bradt Travel Guides £13.95).

In a nutshell: the turbulent past of Bosnia-Herzegovina

12th century Bosnia- Herzegovina becomes an independent state.

1463 and 1482 The two parts of the state are conquered by the Ottomans.

1566 The bridge at Mostar is built.

1878 Bosnia becomes an Austro-Hungarian protectorate, and is annexed in 1908.

1914 The Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, is assassinated by Gavrilo Princip after his chauffeur takes a wrong turn in Sarajevo, thus sparking the first world war.

1918 The Austro-Hungarian empire implodes. Bosnia becomes part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. From 1929, this is known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

1945 After being annexed by fascist Croatia in the second world war, Bosnia is liberated by Tito’s partisans, becoming part of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation.

1992 Civil war breaks out following the collapse of communism. Muslims want an independent Bosnia; Serbs want to remain part of Yugoslavia; Croats want to join Croatia.

1992-95 Alliances change constantly, first with Muslim and Croat nationalists fighting Serbs, then Croats fighting Muslims, then internal wrangles between different Muslim factions. In 1992, Radovan Karadzic lays siege to Sarajevo; the following year, Mostar, including its symbolic bridge, is all but destroyed.

1995 Following the massacre of Muslim men by Serbs at Srebrenica and the ensuing Nato intervention, the Dayton peace accords are signed in Paris. Bosnia is divided, one side for Muslims and Croats, the other for Serbs, overseen by a collective presidency.

2003 High Representative Paddy Ashdown removes all mention of independent statehood from both the Bosnian Muslim/Croat and Bosnian Serb constitutions.

July 23, 2004 Mostar’s new Old Bridge is opened.