We were guinea pigs, but in return we got the title of the first city in Europe to have a tram

It has been 130 years since the first tram started running on the streets of Sarajevo, writes the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

From then until today, the operation of the most popular public transport in the capital of BiH was interrupted only during the last Serbian aggression against BiH from '92 to '95.

The first horse-drawn tram passed through Sarajevo on January 1, 1885. The one-way route was 3.1 km long, and the track started from today's Faculty of Economics, ran through Ferhadija and further along the main city street (today's Titova) across Marindvor and ended at Uzana train station. The tram could carry 28 people.

The tram was electrified on May 1, 1895. The vehicles used were produced by the German company "Siemens-Schuckertwerke" and were the first trams manufactured in its facilities.

Incidentally, Sarajevo was the first city in Europe to have an all-day tram line. It was a test line for the future tram in Vienna. So as not to dig up the streets of Vienna or Pest in vain, the Austro-Hungarians decided to test the "horse railway" - as the tram was called at the time - in Sarajevo first.

Thus, in the summer of 1884, the digging of Sarajevo's streets and the laying of tram tracks began. On that occasion, Sarajevo lost one of its most beautiful bridges - the stone bridge that spanned Koševski potok near the Alipašina mosque, but it also gained the title of the first city in the Balkans and Central Europe to have a tram, reports NAP.