Boys and girls, attendants of The School of Friendship, visited the Svrzo’s House Museum on Saturday. All 25 of them have seen the traditional Bosnian house built in the late 18th century for the first time. The children were very interested and carefully listened about the lifestyle of an urban Bosnian family in the late 18th and throughout the 19th century. Their attention was drawn by many exhibited items from the mentioned period and they had many questions about the lifestyle of their peers from the period.
The house was built by a prominent Sarajevo family, the Glo?o family, a member of which was kadi – Islamic judge-administrator – Munib effendi Glo?o, famous for his involvement in Bosnia’s struggle for autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. The family had no male heirs, and the property came to possesion of another prominent Sarajevo family, Svrzo through marriage. Svrzo’s House is a typical example of the architecture of that period, with its division into the selamluk or public quarters and the haremluk or private, family quarters. It was purchased from the Svrzo family, refurbished and opened to the public in the 1960s. Following the siege of Sarajevo, the house was renovated and again opened to the public in 1997. Further major renovations were carried out on the house in 2005, when the roof was repaired, the cobbles were relaid, obsolete service installations were replaced, and the painted decoration on the musandera (built-in range of cupboards) in the main halvat (drawing-room), which had faded over the years, was restored. The Museum has published a bilingual – Bosnian and English – monograph on Svrzo’s house.
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