Stari Most

Suleiman I, His Imperial Majesty Grand Sultan, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe was the tenth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
He reigned from 1520 to 1566 and is better known simply as Suleiman the Magnificent.
In 1556 he commissioned a local architect, Hajrudin, to build a bridge in the town of Mostar in Bosnia to span the river Neretva.
Hajruddin accepted the commission and proposed to create a dazzling structure using locally quarried stone and an unorthodox mortar of horsehair and eggwhite.
Suleiman accepted this but warned Hajrudin that if the bridge collapsed he would be executed.
Hajrudin pressed on with his project but reportedly made arrangements for his funeral as the bridge approached completion.
Once the bridge was completed Hajruddin lost all faith in his creation.
The night before the scaffolding was to be removed and the Sultan was due to arrive to inspect the bridge Hajrudin fled and was never heard of again.
The bridge stood for almost five hundred years.
Despite the concerns of the Sultan, and the fears of Hajrudin, the Stari Most never collapsed under its own weight or subsided over time.
Instead mortar fire in 1993 during the Bosnian War did what time and use could never accomplish and brought the Stari Most down.
After the war plans were made to reconstruct the bridge.
The Stari Most was rebuilt to the same specifications and dimensions that Hajrudin designed.
A combination of locally quarried stone and material recovered from the river below was used in its construction.
The engineers refused to reveal what was used for mortar...