A Sarajevo Museum Designed for International Visitors
Sarajevo has always been a meeting point of cultures, languages and people. At Planet Sarajevo, we believe that the story of the city should be accessible to everyone who comes to discover it.
That is why Planet Sarajevo now offers audio guides in 12 languages: Bosnian, English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Czech, Swedish, Arabic and, most recently, Mandarin Chinese.
The introduction of Chinese marks an important new step in making Planet Sarajevo accessible to visitors arriving from across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and particularly to the growing number of Chinese travelers discovering Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Throughout the exhibition, all written content is presented in both Bosnian and English. The audio guides take this accessibility further, allowing visitors to experience the complete story of Planet Sarajevo in their own language and at their own pace. This is especially important because Planet Sarajevo tells a side of the city that many international visitors know very little about.
The exhibition takes visitors into Sarajevo between 1945 and 1992, a period of remarkable cultural, social and creative development. Through multimedia, archival footage, music, photography, interactive installations, virtual reality, holograms and digital storytelling, visitors discover a Sarajevo of music and film, architecture and art, sport and media, industry and innovation, and the unforgettable 1984 Winter Olympic Games.
The stories range from Radio Sarajevo and the rise of the Sarajevo pop-rock school to the companies that connected the city with the world, its internationally recognized artists and filmmakers, European champion athletes, New Primitivism, the transformation of the city through architecture and, of course, Sarajevo’s Olympic story.
Visitors can experience the Olympic bobsled through VR, enter an Infinity Room inspired by Sarajevo’s music history, explore interactive and archival content, and even have a conversation with an AI interpretation of visionary engineer and former Sarajevo mayor Emerik Blum. For Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, European and other international visitors, the audio guides provide more than translation. They provide context.
Names such as Baščaršija, Skenderija, Trebević and Zetra become part of a larger story. Visitors can understand why the 1984 Winter Olympics transformed Sarajevo, how the city developed one of the most influential music scenes in former Yugoslavia, how its artists and filmmakers gained international recognition, and how Sarajevo’s humor, language and creative energy influenced generations.
The new Mandarin Chinese audio guide has been created in Simplified Chinese, while the Arabic audio guide makes the complete experience accessible to Arabic-speaking visitors. Together with Turkish, Russian, Czech, German, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Bosnian, they make Planet Sarajevo a museum where visitors from very different parts of the world can feel welcome.
The multilingual experience also allows every visitor to explore independently. Listen, pause, replay a story, scan a QR code, watch archival footage or spend more time with an interactive installation. There is no single way to experience Planet Sarajevo.
For travelers searching for things to do in Sarajevo, museums in Sarajevo, Sarajevo attractions, Olympic history, Yugoslav history, Sarajevo music and culture, or an interactive museum experience, Planet Sarajevo offers an opportunity to discover a different side of the city — one that goes beyond the stories most commonly associated with Sarajevo.
A museum should not only preserve stories. It should make them accessible. Twelve languages bring us closer to that goal, opening Sarajevo’s stories to visitors from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and around the world.
Because Sarajevo has always been a city of encounters. And now, more visitors can hear its stories in their own language. Welcome to Sarajevo. Welcome to another planet.
