Those were torn out during the Balkan war in the 1990s. Then World War II ended, and a plaque went up noting that this was 'where Gavrilo Princip threw off the German occupiers,' says Lyon, 'obviously with references to the recent war in mind.'įor a while, there were footprints in the sidewalk where tourists could stand in Princip's shoes. There was a plaque in the 1930s that said Princip fired shots expressing the longing of people to be free. Lyon runs through about a half-dozen monuments that have been erected on this site, built up and torn down with each change in power. 'Was Gavrilo Princip a terrorist, or was he a national hero? There have been tug-of-war interpretations, and they have changed over time.' 'The question you're faced with is very stark,' says historian James Lyon, an expert in Balkan history.

That was the first in a long string of short-lived memorials to the assassination. And it was destroyed in 1918,' says Nazerovic. It was a monument with a very short life. In the one-room museum on the corner where the assassination took place, tour guide Mirsad Nazerovic points to a black-and-white photo of a pillar that used to stand outside this building. Today, the legacy of the Bosnian Serb nationalist remains the subject of intense debate - nowhere more than in Sarajevo itself. That event triggered World War I, charting the course for the 20th century. Depending on whom you ask, he's either a hero or a terrorist.Ī hundred years ago Saturday, Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Nineteen-year-old Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, during a visit to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

Archduke franz ferdinand assassination