History of Sarajevo more modern and advanced nation than the Ottoman Empire, Sarajevo was quickly westernized and adapted to their standards. A western education system was implemented, and Sarajevo's inhabitants started writing in Latin script for the first time. By 1910, Sarajevo was populated by just under 52,000 people. Just four years later the most famous event in the history of Habsburg Sarajevo, and perhaps in the city’s history, occurred. The Assassination in Sarajevo, during which a young Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on their visit to the city, started a
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand wife planned to visit Sarajevo to open the state museum in its new premises there. Duchess Sophie, according to their eldest son, Duke Maximilian, accompanied her husband out of fear for his safety. As Sophie, although of high aristocratic birth, was not from a dynastic family, her union with the Habsburg heir presumptive could only be a morganatic marriage. Emperor Franz Joseph had only consented to their marriage on the condition that their descendants would never ascend the throne. The 14th anniversary of their marriage fell on 28 June. As historian A. J. P. Taylor observes: Franz Ferdinand was an