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Abstract: The history of the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is particularly fortunate for exploring the concept of cosmopolitism, as it reflects both the Ottoman and Western principles of urban design which are still clearly visible in the present structure of the city. The paper confronts the two periods of particular importance for the development of the city: the era of its splendour during the Ottoman times, the long 16th century, and the years of the Austro-Hungarian regime, 1878-1918. The fast growth of Sarajevo in those periods renders the similarities and differences of concepts of development especially visible, as well as the relations of different ethnic groups present in the city. Turkish Sarajevo is the city of clear separation of the usage of urban soil, with the commercial centre and the residential quarters on the slopes around it. The interaction between the different ethnicities (Muslim, catholic, orotodox and Juish) and fluctuationg groups, as burocrats, soldiers, students and merchants was limited and controlled by the creation of the apposite infrastructures, often connected to vakuf, the form of pious foundation of rich ottoman governors. Forty years of Austrian rule in Bosnia demonstrate profound changes in the image of the city, the negotiation with the tradition and the introduction of the new institutions. The religious tollerance of the late 19th century enables the visibility on the architectural level of the different religious and ethnic groups, and weakens, but not destroys, the antique differentiation of the usage of the urban soil.