Preserved inside the Franciscan Church of Saints Peter and Paul is this shattered memorial to Paškal Buconjić, a Franciscan friar who became the first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Mostar-Duvno in 1881. Following his death in 1910, he was buried inside the church and the Croatian sculptor Ivan Rendić created a memorial incorporating a portrait relief of the bishop, an inscription and elaborate decorative stonework.
The memorial was broken apart when the original church was shelled and burned during the fighting in Mostar on 9 May 1992. Its surviving pieces have been mounted together inside the replacement church, with the large gaps and fractured edges deliberately left visible rather than disguised by reconstruction.
I liked that it had been presented in this way, with the accompanying information explaining what had happened. Within a church rebuilt after wartime destruction, the fragmented monument provides a permanent reminder of what was lost and ensures that the violence inflicted upon the original building is not entirely obscured by its replacement.