1 - Introduction

Summary

Bosnia and Hercegovina is extraordinary and beautiful, a country of extremes in landscapes, personalities and history. Visually stunning and able to draw in thousands of tourists despite the devastation of civil war in the 1990s, it combines climatic zones and both Eastern and Western styles of living. In Livanjsko polje, an almost completely flat valley where wild horses graze, there is an intriguing disappearing karst river called the Jaruga. At Vrelo Bune, extremely cold and clean water flows out of a small cave from a huge subterranean lake carrying a large variety of fish with it. In Visoko there is a rare symmetrical pyramid, a type of hill that is known to geologists as a flatiron. It looks like an ancient Egyptian temple that has been covered in shrubs and trees and it draws in tourists from around the world. The series of salt lakes in the centre of the city of Tuzla are rare to Europe and are a small remnant of the once vast Pannonian sea. Bosnia's highest peak Maglić, in the Sutjeska National Park, forms part of the border with Montenegro and stands 2,386 metres above the sea. Beneath it lies the virgin forest of Perućica, one of the wildest and least accessible parts of Europe where bears and wolves live almost undisturbed by humans. In the Middle Ages, the remote towns of Vratar and Vratac were only accessible by single file and were a place of refuge during political crises. Bosnia's scenery such as the waterfall at Jajce has been captured by numerous writers and artists, both native and foreign. Sketches of daily life, the costumes worn by locals and their houses, musical instruments and food have all been carefully recorded for posterity.

Bosnia has a rich natural heritage, but has been subject to almost every major social movement or ideological experiment in the last millennium.