The Ruins of Memory. Dissonance and Conflict at the Partisan Cemetery in Mostar
The Ruins of Memory. Dissonance and Conflict at the Partisan Cemetery in Mostar

Summary/Abstract: The conservation of funerary heritage represents a particularly critical field within contemporary heritage studies, especially in contexts shaped by political rupture, conflict, and contested memories. Cemeteries associated with war differ from other heritage categories in that memory is inseparably linked to burial, individual names, and human remains, conferring upon them a specific ethical dimension. This article analyses the Partisan Memorial Cemetery of Mostar, designed by Bogdan Bogdanović and inaugurated in 1965, as an emblematic case of dissonant funerary heritage in postsocialist and post-conflict Europe. Conceived within the Yugoslav memorial programme after the Second World War, the cemetery was intended as a universal funerary landscape capable of transcending ethnic, religious, and political divisions through spatial experience rather than explicit symbolism. This paper reconstructs the historical and cultural context of its creation, examines its architectural composition and urban role, and emphasises the centrality of the burial area within the overall meaning of the site. Since the 1990s, the cemetery has undergone a trajectory marked by war damage, institutional protection, social rejection, and the systematic destruction of its headstones in 2022. The research argues that this violence must be understood as an attack on the funerary core of the monument rather than on architecture alone. By focusing on Mostar, this paper reflects more broadly on the role of cemeteries in difficult contexts of dissonant heritage, highlighting the limits of conventional conservation tools and the need to address ethical, social and memorial dimensions alongside material preservation.

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