What it feels like to stand on the spot where the 20th century’s horrors began

It is, quite possibly, the prettiest possible spot on the planet for a political assassination. Certainly, if you were going to pick a location in which to shoot a bullet that would ultimately cause the deaths of some 17 million people, and you wanted it to be alive with picturesque splendour and general scenic charm – well, this would be as fine a site as any.

The corner of Zelenih Beretki and Obala Kulina Bana is not, of itself, especially striking – though there is a smart uniformity to the 19th-century houses on either side. However, gazing south, I realise I am caught in a swirl of conflicting emotions.

One is a nagging discomfort at finding myself standing in a place of such specifically dreadful heritage. Another is a sense of wonder at my surroundings – not least the four-arch Latin Bridge as it carries foot traffic over the currents of the Miljacka. The river that runs east-west across the centre of Sarajevo adds to the beauty of the image.

Although short – a maximum 26 miles long, depending on what you deem to be the source – its waters rush down into the city, surging as they race for the Adriatic, having gained speed on the slopes of Jahorina.

That particular mountain is invisible at river level, obscured by its brother in the Dinaric Alps, Trebević – which rears over the Bosnian capital. But with the Emperor’s Mosque (a 15th-century Ottoman classic) and the green space of At Mejdan decorating the south bank directly opposite, there is a photogenic quality to the setting, in spite of its notoriety.

Obviously, Gavrilo Princip did not choose this precise patch of pavement for its attractive character. Indeed, he did not choose it all, ending up here, just after 11am on June 28 1914, via a range of colliding factors – random circumstance, rank (mis)fortune, the carelessness of the security services who were supposed to guard an important visitor to a city that was not minded to give him a friendly welcome.

But it was here, 110 years ago today, that this young Bosnian-Serb revolutionary – he was just 19 – happened upon Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Princip would fire his handgun – a Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale Model 1910 .380-calibre pistol – at close quarters; into the jugular of the 50-year-old heir presumptive to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, into the abdomen of his wife Sophie.

Both bled to death within 40 minutes. The conflict which came in the wake of their murders would last rather longer – the First World War digging its sharp spurs into the globe for more than four years. Its echoes still ring out to this day.

Assassinations of such consequence tend to leave visible marks on the places where the knife was thrust, or the trigger pulled. Not necessarily blood stains on the tarmac, but a haze of infamy which lingers. How this is processed varies from city to city. Rome is not overly fond of the Largo di Torre Argentina, where Julius Caesar fell, in what was the Theatre of Pompey, in 44BC – walkways which allow tourists to explore what is a dowdy cluster of ruins were only installed in 2019 (the Temple of Caesar, in the ancient forum, receives more focus).

By contrast, the US has embraced its two most famous presidential exits – the Sixth Floor Museum on Dealey Plaza in Dallas examines the death of John F. Kennedy in impressive detail, inside the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald reputedly took aim on November 22 1963; Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC revels in its status as the venue where John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln on April 14 1865. The gunning down of Martin Luther King, on April 4 1968, elevated the Lorraine Motel in Memphis into something far more important; America’s National Civil Right Museum.

Sarajevo takes a cautious middle path through this minefield. The record says that Princip was loitering either just within, or on the doorstep of, the building at the eastern corner of the junction, when the Archduke’s car made its turn off the riverside road – then known as “Appel Quay” (it would not become Obala Kulina Bana, named after a former Bosnian king, until 1993).

In 1914, it was Schiller’s, a delicatessen. Now, it is part of the Museum of Sarajevo, focusing on the window of 1878-1918 – a period which spans Bosnia and Herzegovina’s escape from Ottoman rule and its gradual annexation by Austria (in 1908).

The brush-strokes are broad, for two reasons. One is that, via the complex tapestry of politics and ethnicity which shapes the Balkans, Princip is a divisive figure – still hailed as a hero and a freedom fighter in Serbia; generally denounced as a terrorist in Bosnia.

Another is that Bosnia has witnessed the evils of war in its immediate past, between 1992 and 1996, when it was trapped in the vicious siege that became one of the most appalling episodes in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia. Simply, it has deeper, more recent, scars.

The vagueness continues inside. The museum’s main exhibit, Princip’s gun, is a replica.

And yet, the footprints of that day are still remarkably easy to detect. And so I trace them, following the route that the doomed Austrians took. The journey mainly takes me along the riverside, where the landmarks where the couple halted are still writ large on the grid.

Even at a distance of 110 years, the lack of protection afforded to one of the world’s most significant men is shocking. The Archduke was not especially popular at home. He was only the heir by default; the eldest nephew of Emperor Franz-Joseph – whose sole and beloved son, Rudolf, had committed suicide in 1889. Sophie was a further “problem”.

While of noble lineage, the court in Vienna deemed her to be of insufficiently high birth to match her husband’s status. The couple were rarely seen together at official events – although, in this case, they had been dispatched south by the Emperor. Their purpose in Bosnia was to inspect a session of military manoeuvres, and to open a new state museum.

They were heading for trouble. Because the Archduke was not popular in Bosnia either. The Balkans were already beginning to seethe with the nationalist sentiments that would tear Yugoslavia and the peninsula apart eight decades later – with Serbia, as well as Bosnia, bridling at the imposition of Austrian rule on the latter. And there was no dearth of angry young men eager to sign up to the cause. Princip was just one of six would-be assassins – part of a team co-ordinated by covert Serbian military group the Black Hand.

Worse still for the Archduke, his movements were common knowledge. He was due to arrive in Sarajevo by train, from the spa town of Ilidža, on the western outskirts. He and Sophie were to pause at a barracks near the station, then drive to the river, and hug the Miljacka along Appel Quay – bound for City Hall, two miles east, for a meet-and-greet with local dignitaries. From there, the itinerary would bring the convoy back along the water, to what is now the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, three miles west.

As with JFK 49 years later, the journey involved a slow-motion drive in an open vehicle. Six cars left the station, with the Archduke and Sophie in the third; a soft-topped Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton that was state-of-the-art for the era, but hardly invulnerable to attack. Riding with them was Oskar Potiorek, the army officer who, having been appointed Governor of Bosnia in 1911, was the main figure of Austrian power in the city.

At first, the assassination attempt was as incompetent as the plans to prevent it. All six firebrands were stationed along Appel Quay. But the first two members of the cell lost their nerve as the motorcade rolled by. A third, Nedeljko Čabrinović, steeled himself, and threw his bomb, at about 10:10am. His aim was relatively true, but the device struck the rolled-down canopy of the Double Phaeton, bounced onto the road, and exploded under the fourth vehicle – injuring those inside it, as well as 20 onlookers.

Continuing the air of ineptitude, Čabrinović tried to commit suicide. But the cyanide pill he gulped was too old and degraded to cause more than vomiting, and when he leapt into the Miljacka, he found that the meagre summer flow left him sprawled on the riverbed. He was arrested at once.

Alarmed, the convoy sped to City Hall, dashing past Princip and his two comrades. Here, a visibly unnerved Archduke gave a speech from bloodied pages – the papers had been in the fourth car. Sensibly, the couple decided to abandon their trip to the museum – and go, instead, to see the injured in the hospital.

But a call to keep them in City Hall until troops could be brought into the city was vetoed by Potiorek – partly because the soldiers had been on manoeuvres, and would not be in the correct uniforms; partly because he thought the peril had passed. “Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?” he asked the Archduke.

Potiorek did at least insist that the motorcade should head to the hospital by returning along the river, rather than by cutting into the labyrinth of streets at Sarajevo’s heart. But the message was not delivered to the drivers. The first two cars turned right onto the lane that is now Zelenih Beretki. When Leopold Lojka, the Archduke’s chauffeur, followed, Potiorek yelled at him to stop. Lojka slammed on the brakes, but stalled the car as he tried to put it into reverse. Princip, hanging out on the corner, could not believe his luck.

He, too, would be grabbed before he could kill himself. He escaped the death penalty by dint of his age (he would have had to be 20 at the time of the crime to face the ultimate sanction), only to perish in an Austrian-run prison, on April 28 1918 – succumbing to tuberculosis. He was entirely aware of the inferno that his actions had ignited; that Austro-Hungary had declared war on the Serbia it held responsible for the assassination; that alliances had dragged Germany, France, Britain and Russia into the fray. He was 23.

Stroll across Sarajevo today, and the scene does not look far removed from the flashpoint which flipped the world on its axis. City Hall still admires its reflection in the river, its vaguely Moorish architecture belying the fact that it was built by the Austrians between 1891 and 1896 – and that is was so badly damaged by enemy shelling in the 1990s siege that the reconstruction work took almost two decades (from 1996 until 2014).

Other parts of the tale are less obvious. An unassuming plaque on the side of the Sarajevo Museum (visitsarajevo.ba/museums) makes quiet mention that this is the assassination site; the National Museum (zemaljskimuzej.ba) pays scant attention to the murders. The city goes about its days without much care for 1914, eating dinner in the Bascarsija district, whose maze of shops and alleys still sings of the Ottoman era – and skiing on Jahorina in winter.

Only at the Vidovdan Heroes Chapel, a mile north of the river, is the link explicit. Here, in this small Serbian-Orthodox church, lie the remains of Gavrilo Princip (as well as of Nedeljko Čabrinović) – another dead young man in a city that has seen too many of them.

Getting there

Ryanair (01279 358 438; ryanair.com) flies to Sarajevo from London Stansted; Wizz Air (0330 977 0444; wizzair.com) serves the city directly from Luton.

Touring there

Regent (0117 453 7485; regent-holidays.co.uk) offers a five-day “Sarajevo Short Break” (which includes a day-trip to Mostar), from £810 per person, including flights.

Four other locations tied to the assassination

Traces of June 28 1914 can be found beyond Sarajevo…

The Museum of Military History (Austria)

Remarkably, Princip’s gun was handed to Anton Puntigam, the priest who – a close friend of the Archduke – gave the royal couple the last rites. It is now on display at the Museum of Military History in Vienna (hgm.at), where it shares its place in the collection with the black-painted Double Phaeton onto whose running-board the killer leapt to fire his shots.

Konopiště Castle (Czechia)

Somewhat macabrely, the bullets that killed the Archduke and his wife are both on show, at Konopiste Castle (zamek-konopiste.cz) – in the town of Benesov, 30 miles south-east of Prague, in what is now Czechia. As random as this sounds, there is a connection between the property and its grim artefacts – Konopiste was once owned by Franz Ferdinand, and was a favourite summer oasis. His and Sophie’s death masks are here too.

Terezin (Czechia)

Though his youthful age (just) saved him from execution, Gavrilo Princip did not live to see the end of the war he had unwittingly started. He was confined to a cell in the Small Fortress – in what was Theresienstadt, in Austro-Hungarian territory. Nowadays, this is Terezin, 40 miles north of Prague, in Czechia. And the fortress is a museum, having also served as a Gestapo prison in the Second World War (pamatnik-terezin.cz/small-fortress) – a relentlessly whirring cog in the death-maelstrom that was the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Artstetten Castle (Austria)

The down-the-nose treatment of Sophie continued after her death. Her “lower” social status saw the couple denied burial in the Imperial Crypt of the Hapsburg dynasty, in central Vienna. Instead, she and the Archduke are entombed at Artstetten Castle, a pretty confection of a stately home, 60 miles west of the Austrian capital (schloss-artstetten.at).