Sarajevo
Sarajevo (Bosnia/Croatian/Serbian cyrillic Сарајево) (Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [sǎrajeʋo]) is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an estimated population of 369,534.
The Sarajevo metropolitan area, including Sarajevo, East Sarajevo and surrounding municipalities, is home to 688,354 inhabitants.
Moreover, it is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity,and the center of the Sarajevo Canton. Nestled within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans.
Sarajevo is the leading political, social and cultural center of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a prominent center of culture in the Balkans, with its region-wide influence in entertainment, media, fashion, and the arts.
The city is famous for its traditional cultural and religious diversity, with adherents of Islam, Orthodoxy, Judaism and Catholicism coexisting there for centuries. Due to its long and rich history of religious and cultural variety, Sarajevo is sometimes called the "Jerusalem of Europe" or "Jerusalem of the Balkans". It was, until late in the 20th century, the only major European city to have a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church and synagogue within the same neighborhood. A regional center in education, the city is also home to the Balkans' first institution of tertiary education in the form of an Islamic polytechnic called the Saraybosna Osmanlı Medrese, today part of the University of Sarajevo.
