Vijećnica or the City Hall is one of the most important cultural monuments and the most popular tourist spots in Sarajevo.
The building has quite a fascinating story, but what many people don’t know is that there are many legends that say that it is cursed and haunted.
The first stories about the curse of Vijećnica begin during its construction. One of the workers died on the construction site after a bucket of mortar fell on his head. In 1914 Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie died just minutes away from The City Hall.
In 1983 the doorman of the City Hall called Ilijaz killed his best friend Fatmir with 9 gunshot wounds. Nobody till this day know why.
There were a few suicides tied to the City Hall as well.
During the time that Vijećnica was a National Library, three of the employees committed suicide. A thirty year old librarian Ankica jumped out the window, in 1964 the LIbrary Director hung himself in his office, and just a few months later another librarian called Ksenija also killed herself.
Some other strange deaths happened there. A man called Branko who worked there slipped on the front step of Vijećnica, hit his head and died on the spot in the 70s. Director Luka died literally the first day of his retirement, and another director died in a car crash when he was returning home from work.
There are many theories about why Vijećnica might be cursed.
Some people belive that the reason might be the land on which its built on. It used to belong to Mustafa Pasha Babić, who exiled from Sarajevo in 1851 by a notorious Ottoman general Omer Paša Latas. After he was forced to leave, his property was used for the bloody mass execution of the Bosnian people.
However, most people think that the original architect Wittek cursed it. Wittek was assigned the Vijećnica project, but after he had to go to Cairo for a business trip, his rival Paržik completely changed the appearance. Wittek was very upset by this, and he had some sort of a manic episode and ended up being hospitalized. He killed himself by hanging in the hospital, but not before he cursed Vijećnica many times.