War Childhood Museum Museum

Website: https://www.warchildhoodmuseum.com

The War Childhood Museum is a community museum in Sarajevo that collects and exhibits personal objects and oral testimonies from people who experienced childhood during the Bosnian war of the 1990s. It presents those individual stories through small artefacts, photographs and recorded interviews.

Exhibits are arranged around personal narratives rather than large historical overviews, and the collection emphasises everyday objects that belonged to children and families. The museum is compact and is intended to provide intimate, testimony-driven displays rather than a large permanent national collection.

The museum was founded in the 2010s to recover and preserve these personal memories and to provide a space for those testimonies to be heard in Sarajevo. Since opening it has collected items and stories from across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It is located in central Sarajevo, within walking distance of the historic old town and other cultural institutions in the city centre.

• Exhibit style: Combines personal objects with recorded testimonies to present first-person perspectives of children who lived through the 1990s conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The War Childhood Museum is in central Sarajevo (near the Bistrik/Baščaršija area) and is easily reached on foot from the old town and main central areas. From Baščaršija it’s a short walk (a few minutes) through the historic centre.

The museum is also served by Sarajevo’s city buses and is a short taxi ride from Sarajevo’s main transport hubs (bus/rail stations) if you prefer not to walk.

• Visit the War Childhood Museum in the morning or on a weekday to avoid school-group peaks and to experience the exhibits in a quieter, more reflective setting.
• Allocate at least an hour for the museum-its intimate galleries of personal items and recorded testimonies are compact but powerful, and taking time to listen to the stories significantly enhances the visit.
• Respect photography and recording rules inside the museum and ask staff before taking images; combine the visit with a walking tour of Sarajevo's historic center to place the museum's stories in the city's wider context.