Asim Ferhatovic Hase

The ground sits low in a bowl carved by the hills, with the pitch ringed by a red tartan track that still feels like it belongs to a different era. That track is the first thing a visitor notices.

The Asim Ferhatović Hase Stadium opened in 1947, though the pitch and track were not completed until 1950. It served as the opening-ceremony venue for the 1984 Winter Olympics, when a firework-lit flame burned above Sarajevo, but the concrete that frames the stands carries a heavier weight. During the siege in the 1990s the stadium was a visible landmark for the city below, and the subsequent rebuild stripped the terraces to make room for plastic seats. The capacity shrank, but the shape remains.

On matchdays the track disappears behind advertising boards and rows of fans, yet it is still there, curving around the grass. A scoreboard hangs over the main stand, and graffiti marks the concrete walls outside. The club, FK Sarajevo, plays its home games here, and the nearest rival, Željezničar, is only a few kilometres away — a derby that tightens things up whatever the table says. The pitch is natural grass, laid fresh after a drainage overhaul in 2023. It drains quickly on damp evenings, and the ball runs true.

There is no official stadium website of its own; the club’s address is fksarajevo.ba. The record crowd, often cited at around sixty thousand, came for that 1982 derby, but the numbers now are smaller. The stadium fell silent more often in the years that followed, and the track was eventually covered, yet it remains the only place in the city where you can still walk the old Olympic path.