The part of the Bistrik, large neighborhood in the Stari Grad municipality, which spread on the left bank of the Miljacka river on the slopes of Trebević mountain, where the Franciscan friary and the votive church of St. Anthony of Padua are located, used to be called Latinluk (transl.

[2] The newly built church received crosses, a canopy, an altar, a chalice and other eucharistic objects from the French empress Eugénie de Montijo in 1864.

As the only Catholic church in the city, it was ceded by the Bosnian Franciscans to the first Archbishop of Vrhbosna Josip Štadler, who used it as his residence from 1881 until the consecration of the Sacred Heart Cathedral in 1889.

[1][3] The Franciscans of Sarajevo built the friary next to the church of St. Antony in 1894[4] based on a design by architect, Carlo Panek in Neo-Gothic style.

[1][3] The adjacent friary, built in 1894, houses the main archive of the Franciscan Province of Bosna Srebrena,[1] as well as a rich pinakothek with more than a hundred works of mostly contemporary fine art by the most famous Bosnia and Herzegovinian painters.

Both the Franciscan friary and the church of St. Antony affirmed its presence and leading role, especially during and after the Bosnian war and the Siege of Sarajevo of 1990's, both in civic and religious sense, as the center of the Franciscan presence in the city of Sarajevo, and a place of numerous spiritual initiatives, ecumenical and interfaith dialog, cooperation and reconciliation, as well as practical contribution in providing humanitarian aid during the war of the 90's.

[1][3][5][6] The complex of buildings, the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua and the adjacent Franciscan friary, is inscribed into the list of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the KONS, on 8 November 2006.