Museum dedicated to Sarajevo assassination reopens

After repairing damage from Bosnias’ 1992-95 war a museum that shows the history of the 1914 assassination that sparked World War I reopened Tuesday.

The Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918 catalogues the period of Austro-Hungarian rule and the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, widely regarded as the act that triggered World War I.

The downtown Sarajevo museum, located at the site of the assassination, was devastated during the Bosnian war. The building's renovation was financed by the city of Sarajevo with help from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, fatally shot Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, on a street corner near Sarajevo's Latin Bridge, which was also damaged in Bosnia's war and renovated in 2004.

Pictures of the assassination went around the world: the archduke and his pregnant wife, Sophie, slumped in the back of an open car, and Princip jumping from the bridge into the Miljacka river in an attempt to flee from the police.

Princip, 19, was captured, tried and sent to prison, where he died of tuberculosis four years later. The shots from Princip's pistol led Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, dismembering the Habsburg Empire and igniting World War I.