The old town Tešanj is located on the top of a rocky hill, next to the Tešanjka River.
Flying over the Gradina in Tešanj and looking at the old fortress from a bird’s perspective is amazing.
It is being assumed that Illyrians were the first to have their fort here, which was later destroyed by the Romans. After that, it is very likely that the Romans built their refugium. With the arrival of the Slavic people in the Balkans, the fort in Tešanj was destroyed again, and the county court was not built until late Middle Ages. Tešanj was then within the medieval Bosnia, owned by the medieval noble family Zlatonosović of Usora.
Tešanj is mentioned in written records for the first time on March 23, 1461 in one letter sent by the Roman Pope Pius the Second to the believers to make a pilgrimage to the Franciscan Church of St. George in Tešanj.
The architectural structure of the old town is comprised of two parts. The first one is the upper part of the town from the medieval period. The other part is the lower part of the town, created in the Ottoman period. The fortified settlement from the medieval period was built on the top of a rocky hill. A dungeon tower, a fenced yard and the entrance to this oldest part of the town were built here. The northeastern part of the yard had a dodecagon tower which was the main defense point of the medieval town. A small rectangular tower was built between this one and the dungeon tower, in a perimeter wall.
