SARAJEVO OLYMPIC MUSEUM

This municipal museum (Olimpijski Muzej) was created to preserve the legacy of the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, the day after the closing ceremony on February 19, 1984. Since then, it has had an eventful history. The luxurious neoclassical palace that houses it, the Villa Mandić (1903), was burnt down at the start of the siege of the city in 1992, and part of the collection was lost. Reopened in 2004 at the Kuševo Olympic complex, the museum finally returned to its original address in 2020. The exhibition opens with the motto Citius Altius Fortius ("faster, higher, stronger") and a superb blue bobsleigh that ran down the track on Mount Trebević. On display are a torch from the torch relay, volunteer and athlete outfits and local mountain gear from the early ^20th century. The 1st floor features documents and objects: merchandising bearing the Vučko mascot, pins, sticks, overalls donated by national delegations, etc. Above all, we discover the original paintings commissioned from the great painters of the day, including Andy Warhol's Le Patineur, Henry Moore's Les Six Têtes des Olympiens and Michel Folon's Le Sauteur, a small skier sketched taking off into a starry sky. But the most touching objects are this thank-you letter from IOC predictor Juan Antonio Smaranch, scorched by the flames, and this half-melted Olympic gold medal. Both were found in the museum's rubble after the 1992 fire.