Travnik, a vizier’s town on the Lašva River in the central part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, records more and more visits by tourists every year, both domestic and from numerous other countries, especially from the Balkan region.
For 150 years, it was the capital of the Bosnian pashaluka, the residence of 77 viziers and the seat of two consulates. Ivo Andrić was born there, the only winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in the former SFR Yugoslavia, whose birthplace has been turned into a museum. There is no doubt that Travnik really has something to offer tourists who decide to visit this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. a city that many say has a special soul.
Record numbers
Fatima Maslić, director of the Travnik Local Museum, points out that they are very satisfied with the tourist visits in recent years.
“During the corona, practically everything stopped and then local people started coming and that’s how they got to know their homeland, they got to know Bosnia and Herzegovina, and now they come often, so the number of local tourists has increased. By the way, last year was a record year as far as the Old Town and the Birthplace of Ivo Andrić are concerned,” said Maslić.
Last year, Ivo Andrić’s Birthplace was visited by 13,097 visitors, the Native Museum by 6,008, and the Old Town by 66,426 guests, which is a total of 85,531 visitors to these three popular locations alone.
“These are visitors with tickets, and the Old Town often hosts various events where you have hundreds of visitors, Summer Fest, you have thousands of visitors there, so those numbers are much higher. “More and more people and tourists are discovering Travnik,” said Maslić.
Active work is being done in all fields so that the city can provide visitors with diverse and high-quality content.
“Travnik has a soul because it has a diverse cultural heritage. At every step you see the traces of former cultural epochs that alternated here, starting from the Old Town, the Middle Ages, through Ottoman architecture, which is visible at every step, Austro-Hungarian, Central European architecture. It’s a great layering of different cultural heritage,” Maslić pointed out.
Travnik also offers numerous other regular contents such as exhibitions, book promotions, concerts and theater performances.
Maslić emphasizes that during a visit to their city, travnica kebabs, which have already become a brand, are indispensable, as well as other rich cuisine and a variety of traditional food.
“I invite the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and our friends from neighboring countries to come to Travnik and I don’t think they will regret it,” said Maslić.
Museum under the open sky
Travnik, the former seat of the Ottoman viziers, is certainly an open-air museum today. This is the city that the famous travel writer Evlija Čelebija, in the 17th century, described as “the city with a thousand springs”, and it is also known for the fact that it contains the largest number of preserved turbets in BiH, a total of seven.
In addition to the medieval fortress Stari grad, which is considered the most important cultural and historical monument, Travnik still preserves the remains of Bosnian tradition in the eastern part. Houses covered with shingles are witnesses of a time and a people. The eastern part of Travnik-Osoje dates back to the Ottoman period.
Another of Travnik’s landmarks is the old tower located in Donje Osoje Street, the Hasanpašić tower. It burned down in 1906 when Travnik burned in a fire caused by a locomotive.
In addition, in the eastern part of the city there is a source of “Blue Water”, which is actually the shortest river in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are also 17 mosques dating from the Ottoman period, a memorial museum and the birthplace of Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić in the area of Travnik municipality, AA writes.
