Mostar's main boulevard has become a border between its two main communities: Bosniak Muslims on the east side and Catholic Croats on the west.
Their division is a legacy of Bosnia's "war within a war", which saw Muslims and Croats turn on each other in 1993 after initially fighting together against Serbs.
"The Mostar of today is incomparable with the old Mostar," said Hamza Djonko, a 72-year-old Muslim, who was beaten and expelled from his home in the city's west in 1993.
On Wednesday, UN judges will hand down their last judgement for war crimes committed in the 1990s Bosnian conflict, in the appeal case of six former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders.
All six were found guilty of taking part in a scheme to remove Bosnian Muslims "permanently and create a Croatian territory".
Among the men appealing is Jadranko Prlic, 58, who served as prime minister in the Croats' wartime breakaway statelet of Herceg-Bosna, which appointed Mostar as its capital.
In his original trial he was sentenced to 25 years in prison on 26 charges of aiding and abetting the murder, deportation and harsh detention of Muslims.
'Have to live together'
It was Mostar, once a symbol of Bosnia's multi-ethnic makeup, that saw the worst of the Croat-Muslim clashes, with nearly 80 percent of the city's east destroyed in the fighting.
The Old Bridge, more than 400 years old, was destroyed by Croat forces in November 1993.
Thanks to international assistance, the World Heritage site over the Neretva River was rebuilt and reopened in 2004 -- but the rest of the poor city and its industry never recovered from the conflict.
Due to lack of agreement between the two communities, Mostar has for a decade been without a municipal council.
But "we have to live together, we have no other choice, that's how we have to take this verdict and leave it to historians to write the story," said Croat politician Zoran Mikulic, 55.
He was among the few Mostar residents willing to talk to AFP ahead of the verdict, along with his Bosnian Muslim colleague Edin Zagorcic, 49.
Although they were in opposing wartime camps, they are now local leaders of the Social Democratic party and refuse to do politics along ethnic lines.
"The verdict will be differently received in both parts of the city, but one thing must be emphasised: we do not judge a people, we judge a politics and its executors," said Zagorcic.
Both men say they will "never give up on a reunited Mostar".
Their dream remains far off.
Classrooms divided
To Mostar's east, the blue and yellow flags of Bosnia flutter and the walls are marked with the graffiti of the "Red Army" -- the fans of Velez, a once multi-ethnic football club that is now for Bosnian Muslims.
This team was driven out of its historic stadium in the west, which has since been used by the Croats' Zrinjski club. Here flutter the flags of Herceg-Bosna, similar to the Croatian flag.
Each ethnic community has its own hospital, emergency service, fire brigade, postal system and electricity company.
And while all local children go to the same high school on the dividing boulevard, Croats and Muslims are in separate classes.
Nearby graffiti on a ruined building reads: "Sowing discord to govern".
After Catalonia recently proclaimed independence, graffiti appeared in Mostar announcing that "Herceg-Bosna" would be next to make the move. The statelet was formally given up in 1996.
Zoran Carni, 65, a Croat from Sarajevo, left the country's Muslim-majority capital, to settle in the Croat part of Mostar during the war.
He has friends from every community but "all the Bosniaks I know live in the east and all the Croats in the west".
On Tuesday evening, ahead of the verdict, a mass will be said for the accused at Mostar's cathedral -- on the west side of the city.
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