Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is two regions under one name. Bosnia, the larger, northern part, has wooded mountains and valleys draining north to the Sava; Herzegovina, in the south, is bare limestone karst, cut by the green Neretva on its way past Mostar to the Adriatic, which the country touches only at Neum. Perućica, in the Sutjeska valley, is one of Europe’s last primeval forests, and at Jajce the Pliva falls straight into the Vrbas.

Tvrtko I was crowned king of Bosnia in 1377, and carved medieval tombstones, the stećci, dot its hills. The Ottomans took Bosnia in 1463, and towns grew around mosques, bazaars and bridges; Mostar’s Old Bridge was finished in 1566. Austria-Hungary took over in 1878, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 led to the First World War. Part of Yugoslavia from 1918, the country declared independence in 1992, and the war that followed ended with the Dayton Agreement of 1995.

Mosques, Orthodox and Catholic churches and synagogues stand close together in its old towns, and the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Jewish manuscript from medieval Spain, has been saved from destruction more than once. Ivo Andrić, raised in Višegrad, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. Ćevapi in flatbread, coffee boiled in a copper pot and sevdalinka love songs belong to everyday life. Dams on the Drina and Neretva and coal plants near Tuzla export power, and factories make furniture from local beech.