Bosnia & Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH for short) is a nearly landlocked Western Balkans state that used to be part of former Yugoslavia. In the process of the break-up of the latter, Bosnia and Herzegovina followed Slovenia and Croatia in declaring itself independent – only to be plunged into a brutal war. The legacy of that war makes this one of the most serious dark-tourism destinations on the planet. The degree to which the dark is firmly integrated within the country’s tourism industry (especially in the capital city Sarajevo) is second to none.
You can jump forward to the following subsections of this chapter:
- photos
Historical background: After centuries of Ottoman (Imperial Turkish) rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Habsburgs’ Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878. In July 1914, the Austrian heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Bosnia’s capital city Sarajevo, which sparked the outbreak of WW1. After that war and the end of the Empire, Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and subsequently the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from the end of WWII. In that war Bosnian lands were invaded by the military of the Axis Powers of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The biggest resistance force against these powers was the communist partisan organization of Yugoslavia, and a few decisive battles were fought on the territory of Bosnia. One of the victorious communist leaders then emerged as the new socialist country’s prime minister and later president: Josip Broz Tito. Seen by many as a dictator but a relatively benign one, he was sort of the glue that held Yugoslavia and its different ethnic groups together. Once he passed away in 1980, this cohesion crumbled away, new nationalist movements developed and in the 1990s Yugoslavia began to fall apart, including within Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the first time since WWII, war returned to Europe.
Of all the Balkan wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the bloodiest, longest, and most complex. So complex indeed, that it is beyond the scope of this website to give more than the briefest and most simplified summary:
The region had been multi-ethnic and multifaith for centuries, a constellation which typically provides for enough potential for conflict in itself. During the Tito era of communist Yugoslavia, however, these ethnic/nationalist/religious tensions seemed to have gone away, but in fact they were still lurking beneath the surface…
As soon as Tito was dead, these tensions resurfaced, especially as communism was collapsing in the whole of Eastern Europe. In the first free elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina the communist party was swept away and various nationalist parties took over. And therein lay the sparks for conflict, as there are various competing nationalities/ethnicities/religious groups in the country, the main groups being Bosniaks, who are predominantely Muslim (a legacy of centuries of Ottoman rule), the others Christian, namely Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. In addition to infighting came the relevant allegiances with neighbouring Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro which were (then still the remaining 'Yugoslavia').
As war had broken out between the Serbs and newly independent Croatia, an arms embargo was imposed – which left the Bosniaks at a serious disadvantage. There was basically no Bosnian army, just police forces and some militias, whereas the Yugoslav army was one of the most heavily armed modern military forces in Europe. And this army came in to support the Bosnian Serbs against the Bosniaks. The Serb-dominated parts of the country formed what they called the Republika Srpska (occupying mainly the north-western and eastern parts of the country), and in conjunction with Serbian president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević’s dreams of a "Greater Serbia" (first publicly voiced at Gazimestan), this led to war and "ethnic cleansing" so nasty that the rest of Europe was practically paralysed in shock.
The capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, was laid under siege for nearly four years, Muslim Bosnian enclaves within Republika Srpska, in particular Srebrenica, became sites of massacres of genocidal proportions, and in the south-west ethnic Croats clashed with Muslim Bosnians especially in and around Mostar.
The region had been multi-ethnic and multifaith for centuries, a constellation which typically provides for enough potential for conflict in itself. During the Tito era of communist Yugoslavia, however, these ethnic/nationalist/religious tensions seemed to have gone away, but in fact they were still lurking beneath the surface…
As soon as Tito was dead, these tensions resurfaced, especially as communism was collapsing in the whole of Eastern Europe. In the first free elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina the communist party was swept away and various nationalist parties took over. And therein lay the sparks for conflict, as there are various competing nationalities/ethnicities/religious groups in the country, the main groups being Bosniaks, who are predominantely Muslim (a legacy of centuries of Ottoman rule), the others Christian, namely Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. In addition to infighting came the relevant allegiances with neighbouring Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro which were (then still the remaining 'Yugoslavia').
As war had broken out between the Serbs and newly independent Croatia, an arms embargo was imposed – which left the Bosniaks at a serious disadvantage. There was basically no Bosnian army, just police forces and some militias, whereas the Yugoslav army was one of the most heavily armed modern military forces in Europe. And this army came in to support the Bosnian Serbs against the Bosniaks. The Serb-dominated parts of the country formed what they called the Republika Srpska (occupying mainly the north-western and eastern parts of the country), and in conjunction with Serbian president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević’s dreams of a "Greater Serbia" (first publicly voiced at Gazimestan), this led to war and "ethnic cleansing" so nasty that the rest of Europe was practically paralysed in shock.
The capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, was laid under siege for nearly four years, Muslim Bosnian enclaves within Republika Srpska, in particular Srebrenica, became sites of massacres of genocidal proportions, and in the south-west ethnic Croats clashed with Muslim Bosnians especially in and around Mostar.
UN "peacekeeping" forces that had been sent into the country proved incapable of stopping the carnage. In fact, the role of the UN and indeed the entire outside world in the Bosnian war is often seen as one of massive failure … until NATO forces finally did intervene in 1995, forcing the Serbs to the negotiating table.
In the resulting Dayton Accords the road to peace was laid down – together with a most complicated power-sharing constellation. Basically, the state as such was to retain the original borders of the Bosnia and Herzegovina of former Yugoslavia, but internally it was to consist of distinct "entities", namely the mainly Serbian Republika Srpska and the 'Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina' shared by Muslim Bosnians and Croats. All three ethnic groups have their own 'president', and the presidency of the country at large is shared between three persons, one Bosniak and one Croat (both elected in BiH) plus one Serb (elected in Republika Srpska), and the chairmanship of this collective presidency rotates amongst the three. At the lower levels of government and administration the complexity continues … and if you think this is all crazily complicated, ask any Bosnian and they'll happily agree. But at least there's peace, for now. The underlying ethnic tensions are far from over, but they seem to be under control, more or less. UN/EU forces remain in the country to ensure it stays that way. But the potential for further conflict cannot be denied.
For the time being, however, the country is certainly peaceful enough to be perfectly visitable for tourists. For general tourism, there's lots of pretty scenery and important architectural treasures (some, like the Old Bridge in Mostar, rebuilt after destruction in the war). It's still a relatively cheap place for independent travel – and the people in touristy areas are welcoming to foreign travellers.
For the dark tourist, it is of course first and foremost the remnants of the war and its atrocities that make Bosnia and Herzegovina rank high on the list of dark destinations.
All over the country, ruined and abandoned or only partly restored houses are constant reminders of the war, and even though displaced people are slowly coming back, these (semi-)ruins will continue to be a particular characteristic of rural Bosnia. They will all have their own dark story behind them, but these are not so developed for dark tourism, so Sarajevo is really the most significant base for dark tourism in the country.
In the resulting Dayton Accords the road to peace was laid down – together with a most complicated power-sharing constellation. Basically, the state as such was to retain the original borders of the Bosnia and Herzegovina of former Yugoslavia, but internally it was to consist of distinct "entities", namely the mainly Serbian Republika Srpska and the 'Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina' shared by Muslim Bosnians and Croats. All three ethnic groups have their own 'president', and the presidency of the country at large is shared between three persons, one Bosniak and one Croat (both elected in BiH) plus one Serb (elected in Republika Srpska), and the chairmanship of this collective presidency rotates amongst the three. At the lower levels of government and administration the complexity continues … and if you think this is all crazily complicated, ask any Bosnian and they'll happily agree. But at least there's peace, for now. The underlying ethnic tensions are far from over, but they seem to be under control, more or less. UN/EU forces remain in the country to ensure it stays that way. But the potential for further conflict cannot be denied.
For the time being, however, the country is certainly peaceful enough to be perfectly visitable for tourists. For general tourism, there's lots of pretty scenery and important architectural treasures (some, like the Old Bridge in Mostar, rebuilt after destruction in the war). It's still a relatively cheap place for independent travel – and the people in touristy areas are welcoming to foreign travellers.
For the dark tourist, it is of course first and foremost the remnants of the war and its atrocities that make Bosnia and Herzegovina rank high on the list of dark destinations.
All over the country, ruined and abandoned or only partly restored houses are constant reminders of the war, and even though displaced people are slowly coming back, these (semi-)ruins will continue to be a particular characteristic of rural Bosnia. They will all have their own dark story behind them, but these are not so developed for dark tourism, so Sarajevo is really the most significant base for dark tourism in the country.
- Sarajevo
Sarajevo Siege Museum,
War Childhood Museum,
Srebrenica 11/07/95 Gallery,
City Hall,
Ratni Muzej,
abandoned Olympic bobsleigh track,
Jewish cemetery,
Tito Museum,
Vraca Memorial,
- Mostar
[Museum of War and genocide Victims,
Partisan Memorial & cemetery,
Objekt Buna,
Mostar war ruins]
- Tito's Bunker
- Kozara Spomenik and museum
- Banja Luka
In addition there were also a number of yet more dark sights to see on the 4-day/3-night tour with a driver-guide I had put together for me by Funky Tours in Sarajevo (see their sponsored page here!). This combined the dark with the non-dark and took us from Sarajevo through eastern Bosnia then south, with Mostar our base for two nights, then up to Banja Luka and finally back to Sarajevo. En route we stopped at a number of more or less dark places:
The first one was certainly weird and somewhat disturbing: Kalinovik. This small town/village is the birthplace of Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb general who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ICTY for his lead role in the Srebrenica genocide. But here in his home town this war criminal is celebrated as a hero! There is a large monument to him in the middle of the town square, so conspicuous that it’s impossible to overlook. The semi-abstract sculpture has no facial features, but you can still recognize Mladić with his characteristic military cap. At the entry to the town there’s also a large photo of the man, this time complete with his face, as he gives a military salute. Shocking. Imagine a Heinrich Himmler statue in his birthplace of Munich … unthinkable!
In Miljevina en route towards Foča we stopped by the ruins of the brutalist Ehos Motel for a spot of urbexing. It’s a cool structure for photography, but the interior is now completely trashed.
Our next proper stop was at Tjentište for the Battle of Sutjeska Spomenik, another one of those fabulous Yugoslav communist-era memorial monuments. This one, shaped like two abstract concrete wings (not dissimilar to the monument at the 9th Fort in Kaunas, which is however much bigger). It’s in comparatively intact shape – but the associated museum (itself shaped like a Spomenik) just to the south down the hillside is these days almost always closed (unlike at Kozara); it was certainly locked when we were there. According to the Spomenik Database (external link – opens in a new window) this is for security reasons, and to see the inside you’d have to make special arrangements.
En route from there to Mostar at Gacko we passed a sort of industrial wasteland, a lignite strip-mining area complete with a large thermal power station.
The next day included lots of scenic spots and culture but also one very dark place, namely Stolac with the ruins of the former Bone Hospital, which in the 1990s war was used by Bosnian Croat forces as a detention and torture centre for captured Bosniaks. Today the building is an empty, crumbling shell, so dilapidated inside that you can’t venture in all that much, given the collapsing ceilings you can see. The place is not commodified except for a small plaque at the gate to the compound.
En route from Mostar to Banja Luka our driver-guide made two stops at places near Jablanica where the year before landslides had caused much destruction and killed some twenty people. The road and railway line had been repaired but there was still a long tongue of rubble to be seen that had come off a mountainside and in the village of Donja Jablanica there were several ruins of houses that had been destroyed in the disaster.
In Jablanica itself we stopped briefly to take a look at the memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Neretva, a major victory of Tito’s Yugoslav partisans against the German Nazis in WWII. We didn’t visit the museum about that piece of history but took a look at the open-air parts, in particular the destroyed railway bridge across the Neretva that played a crucial role in the battle. The collapsed bridge you see today, however, is not the original but goes back to a major feature film about the Battle made in 1969 (starring several international movie stars like Yul Brynner, Orson Welles and Curd Jürgens). Apparently the bridge was blown up twice for the film but on both occasions the filmed footage was unusable because of too much smoke making the bridge invisible, so in the end a model was used on a sound stage in a studio. But the destroyed bridge is now the key element of the memorial complex.
En route back to Sarajevo we made a short stop at the memorial by a rebuilt mosque in Ahmici that had been deliberately destroyed in the war by Bosnian Serbs. A large photo on the side of the new building shows the minaret crashed into the old mosque.
I’m sure there’d be even more for dark tourists to discover in this country, though it’s already quite a list of attractions as covered here.
But Bosnia also has plenty of non-dark appeal. Both Sarajevo and Mostar are prime mainstream tourism attractions and indeed quite a few regular tourists hardly ever venture out of the picturesque Old Town quarters (well, their loss, I say). The countryside is quite scenic in many places and activities such as white-water rafting, rock climbing and hiking are popular. Yet those who are after beach resorts and all that will be better served in the neighbouring countries on the Adriatic Sea (Bosnia and Herzegovina only has a very short, almost merely symbolic, stretch of coast).
On the four-day cross-Bosnia tour I was on and that took me to the various dark places indicated above, we also explored a number of non-dark spots of scenic beauty, some pretty towns and castles.
These included the following: the very scenic Kravica waterfalls, Počitelj castle and old town towering over the Neretva River, the dramatic confluence of the Buna and Neretva Rivers (looking like “a river in a river”), the source of the Buna – as it emerges from a cave under a huge vertical cliff face – and the adjacent Dervish house. We also had a longer stopover in the pretty town of Jajce with its restored walled Old Town, fortress ruins and unique town-centre waterfall (at the confluence of the Pliva and Vrbas Rivers) – and Jajce is also the location of the house in which the foundation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was decided on and prepared. Another pretty town we stopped at was Travnik with its castle, museum and many pretty minarets. En route we drove through dramatic gorges along the green Neretva and Vrbas Rivers. We saw lots of mountainous scenery, with winding roads and views of high, still snow-capped mountains, especially along the border with Montenegro. (Apparently we were lucky with the very clear weather – as our driver-guide said that the peaks are shrouded in clouds most of the time.) It really is an incredibly scenic country.
Practicalities: You can get to Bosnia overland or by plane to one of its international airports, with Sarajevo being the principal one with the most connections, and as it is the capital city and main tourism centre that would make the most sense. Coming overland is possible by long-distance bus. The first time I visited the country I did get such a bus from Vienna to Sarajevo, overnight. It was a good 13-hour ride, without a working on-board toilet, but several toilet stops, as well as enforced stops at border checkpoints (back then including at the Slovenian and Croatian borders; these days it will be easier to enter those now EU countries). For my return trip in April 2025 I contemplated going by train via Zagreb, but quickly learned that the allegedly very scenic line to Sarajevo, suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic, had still not been reopened. So, not wanting a repeat of the bus experience, I had to opt for flying in. Theoretically it would also be possible to arrange an overland transfer from Zagreb to Sarajevo by car with Funky Tours, but the aggregate cost for the train to Zagreb and the transfer would have been similar to that of flying and of course much, much more time-consuming.
Getting around in Bosnia is possible by train between Sarajevo and Mostar at least, and also by a network of buses connecting major destinations in the country. Going by car is of course more convenient, and Funky Tours offer that option – see above and their sponsored page here. You can also hire a car, obviously, but navigating the often narrow and winding mountain roads will be demanding. Yet that would give you maximum flexibility and allow access to less well-connected places in the remote countryside. Within Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka, walking is the main means of getting around, plus public transport for longer distances.
Language: Bosnian is a variant of the Serbo-Croat language shared by most of the former Yugoslav countries. Few people outside these countries ever learn it, so it is good to know that English (and to a degree German) is widely spoken, especially within the tourism industry.
Climate: winters can be harsh and snowy in this mostly mountainous country, while the summer heat can become unbearable for some especially in lower-lying areas such as in and around Mostar. So the best time to travel would be in spring or autumn. When I went in 2025 for two weeks in the second half of April the weather ranged from dry and sunny with temperatures as high as 27C to rainy days which were significantly cooler. So you have to be prepared and take flexible clothing and footwear.
Accommodation options vary widely across the whole range but standards are generally pretty good at the mid-range level and often not as pricey as they would be in more central European places.
Food & drink: The classic Balkan cuisine of Bosnia is very meat-heavy, with the ubiquitous grilled minced-meat fingers “ćevapčići” and minced-meat-stuffed pastry “burek” more than staples. They are almost seen as obligatory. There are also non-meat versions of these pastries, though (filled with cheese, potatoes or spinach). Fish is widely offered as well, especially trout (from local rivers), mostly simply grilled. Foreign cuisines are far less common in Bosnia than in many other European countries, except for Italian, at least in the bigger places. Pizza and pasta dishes are often a lifesaver for vegetarians. Vegans will have it harder almost everywhere (except to a degree in Sarajevo). Bosnians evidently tend to have a sweet tooth and in this area the Ottoman legacy is most palpable, especially in the many forms of baklava and halva.
On the drinks front the fruit brandies collectively known as “rakia” are common, even amongst the Muslim population, as is wine (grown mostly by Bosnian Serbs and Croats, though), often at excellent value for money. Fruit juices and the usual array of sweet soft drinks are easy to obtain too. Bosnian coffee is a speciality, similar to Turkish or Greek coffee but with the difference that it’s not pre-sweetened, but served with sugar cubes on the side, so the choice remains yours whether to use them or not (I prefer not to). On the beer front, the usual bland lagers still reign supreme, but craft beers have made sporadic and tentative inroads in the bigger cities. The very best and only proper craft-beer bar I found in Mostar.
Smoking: it’s almost everywhere. Cigarettes could almost be seen as a staple of Bosnian “cuisine” too. Nominally there is now a law prohibiting smoking indoors in restaurants, but few places seem to honour that in practice. I managed to find only four non-smoking restaurants in Sarajevo where this was actually the reality. Elsewhere you have to expect to be surrounded by smokers. Bosnia must have one of the world’s highest proportions of smokers amongst its population. For smokers this must be paradise, but for someone like me who gets nauseous and hence can’t eat when there’s smoke about, it’s a real pain and the single biggest drawback in travelling to Bosnia. It’s one of the reasons why I opted for a (non-smoking) self-catering apartment in Sarajevo for a week on my return visit in April 2025.
