As it was, the settlement left millions dead or crippled, EuropeвЂ™s cultural and physical landscape irreparably marred, and the pre-war political order shattered for ever. But the murders were the proximate cause, and we can never know whether without them tensions would eventually have eased and peaceful settlements been reached. If Europe was not exactly a powder keg waiting to explode, relations between the Powers were such that it was, at least, in a dangerously flammable condition. There were other, underlying causes, of course. The assassination there by Serbian nationalists of the Austrian Crown Prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, along with his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, did not have the cosmic significance of ChristвЂ™s death, but, ultimately leading to both World Wars, its consequences for Europe and the wider world could hardly have been more profound, or catastrophic. Though for very different reasons, Jerusalem was then the only other city where you could find people of such different faiths living cheek by jowl, hence the nickname.ДЇor people of Christian, European culture, Jerusalem is defined by a death. Uniquely in the Europe of the day, strolling through a Sarajevo neighbourhood you might pass first a mosque, then a synagogue, then a Catholic church and finally an Orthodox. However, it was for long the largest and most populous city of the Balkans, drawing people from all over the peninsula, and thus came to echo the regionвЂ™s extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity.

This was not because it had either the antiquity or the sacred associations of Jerusalem, being an Ottoman foundation dating from the fifteenth century. Sarajevo was once known as вЂthe Jerusalem of EuropeвЂ™. View Member Profile Find Member's Topics Find Member's Posts Peter

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