Bosnia in 10 Minutes

Before the Slavs (up to about 600)

Illyrian tribes lived here first. Their city of Daorson near Stolac still has walls from the 4th century BC. The Romans took the region and built roads, villas and spas, like the thermal baths at Ilidža and the villa at Mogorjelo. Slavic tribes arrived in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Medieval Bosnia (1100s to 1463)

Bosnia grew into an independent state under its bans (rulers). Ban Kulin's 1189 charter to Dubrovnik is one of the oldest state documents in the South Slavic world. Bosnia also had its own Bosnian Church, separate from both Rome and Constantinople.

In 1377 Tvrtko I crowned himself king, and for a short time Bosnia was the strongest state in the western Balkans. The south took the name Herzegovina from Herceg (Duke) Stjepan Vukčić Kosača. The era left behind the stećci, carved medieval tombstones that are now on the UNESCO list.

Ottoman Bosnia (1463 to 1878)

The Ottomans conquered the kingdom in 1463 and Herzegovina by 1482. Sultan Mehmed II's Ahdnama of 1463 guaranteed the Franciscans freedom of worship, and the document is still kept at Fojnica. Over the following centuries a large part of the population converted to Islam, while Catholic and Orthodox communities remained.

This is the era that built Sarajevo. Isa-beg Isaković founded the city in the 1460s, and the governor Gazi Husrev-beg filled it with mosques, markets and schools in the 1520s and 1530s. Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 settled here in the following century. The great bridges also date from this time: Mostar's Stari Most (1566) and the Višegrad bridge (1577). In 1831 Husein-kapetan Gradaščević led a revolt for Bosnian autonomy.

Austro-Hungarian Bosnia (1878 to 1918)

The Congress of Berlin handed Bosnia to Austria-Hungary in 1878, and Vienna annexed it fully in 1908. The Habsburgs built railways, European-style streets and buildings like Vijećnica, which is why central Sarajevo changes style in one step at the Meeting of Cultures line.

On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Latin Bridge. A month later the First World War began.

Yugoslavia (1918 to 1992)

After the war Bosnia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. In the Second World War it was occupied and placed inside the fascist Independent State of Croatia. Hundreds of thousands died, including mass killings of Serbs, Jews and Roma by the Ustaše and of Muslims by the Chetniks. Tito's Partisans fought some of their biggest battles here, at the Neretva and the Sutjeska in 1943.

In November 1943, at Jajce, the Partisans laid the foundations of the new Yugoslavia, with Bosnia and Herzegovina as one of six republics. Under Tito it industrialized, and in 1984 Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics.

Independence and war (1992 to 1995)

As Yugoslavia broke apart, Bosnia held an independence referendum in early 1992. Almost everyone who voted said yes, but most Bosnian Serbs boycotted it. Bosnia was recognized internationally in April 1992 and war began the same month.

Bosnian Serb forces, backed by Belgrade, took most of the country. Sarajevo was besieged for 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996. A Croat and Bosniak war in 1993 and 1994 destroyed Mostar's Old Bridge before the two sides made peace. In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica, which two international courts have ruled was genocide. About 100,000 people were killed in the war and around 2 million were driven from their homes.

Today

The Dayton Agreement, signed in Paris in December 1995, ended the war. It created one country made of two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, plus the Brčko District. The country became an EU candidate in December 2022. Thirty years after the war it is one of the fastest-growing destinations in Europe, and still one of the least crowded.

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