BACKGROUND The surgical management of urinary bladder exstrophy is challenging. This paper describes the personal experience in a tertiary care hospital over a period exceeding a quarter of a century. METHODS During the period 1984-2010, 248 patients of the epispadias-exstrophy complex have been treated. The cases of classical bladder exstrophy (n = 210) form the basis of this paper. The stages/procedures used in the surgical reconstruction of bladder exstrophy included bladder closure with anterior abdominal wall reconstruction, bladder neck repair, ureteric reimplantation, epispadias repair and augmentation colocystoplasty in various combinations. Some of these patients had their initial operations done prior to 1984 or in other hospitals. Evaluation methods included, amongst others, clinical evaluation and urodynamic assessment. Eight patients opted out of treatment; 15 patients underwent permanent urinary diversion by either ureterosigmoidostomy or colon conduit. The remaining 187 patients were treated with bladder reconstruction, and of these, 132 patients have had at least one attempt at bladder neck reconstruction with 56 of these patients having undergone an augmentation colocystoplasty. RESULTS A total of 105 patients had socially acceptable continence: 57 from the bladder neck reconstruction group and 48 from the bladder augmentation group. Further attempts at continence surgery have been offered to the inadequately continent patients. CONCLUSIONS Surgical management of bladder exstrophy demands patience and perseverance. It is possible to provide all patients with socially acceptable continence with bladder neck division and catheterizable continent stoma as the last resort. Urodynamic assessment has emerged as an essential tool in the follow-up evaluation of these patients. Anticholinergic medication with imipramine or oxybutinin is a useful adjunct in the overall management.