Visit date: May 2025
By the time I got to Banja Luka city it was getting late and the evening was drawing in. It turned out that I had made a good choice of where to stay. I booked a room at Apartmani Kastel via booking.com which was great value at €47 for two nights. It was clean, comfortable and had an amazing view over the Vrbas river. The host was a lovely lady who speaks excellent English and there is a small supermarket less than two minutes away. I was able to stock up on a few nibbles, a bottle of wine and then got a very peaceful nights sleep.
I was only going to have one full day to explore the city of Banja Luka and so I had to make it count. Fortunately it is quite a walkable city and mostly flat.
It was only a short walk from my apartment to the city centre and it took me past the equestrian statue of King Tvrtko I, which sits on what is essentially a huge roundabout with a park and a rather tasteful modern fountain (lit up in the colours of the Srpska flag at night).
Tvrtko became Ban of Bosnia (sort of like a duke, but a mostly independent ruler) as a teenager in 1353 following the death of his uncle Stephen II. I can’t find any information on why Tvrtko became Ban rather than his father Vladislav, but for some reason this was what happened and Vladislav became regent until his death in 1354. Tvrtko’s mother Jelena then acted as Regent until he came of age to exert his own personal rule.
By 1373 he had conquered parts of the former Serbian empire to the East, that empire having collapsed after the death of its last ruler, Uroš the Weak, leaving no successor. Incidentally, Tvrtko was a distant relative of Uroš and thus Tvrtko had himself proclaimed King of Bosnia and Serbia, claiming to be the heir of the now defunct Nemanjić dynasty.
This made Tvrtko the first Bosnian king and his connection to Serbia probably explains why he is such a popular historical figure in Republika Srpska today. He made later conquests in Dalmatia and elsewhere in Croatia, taking Bosnian borders to their greatest historical reach. The 1389 Battle of Kosovo however saw his grasp of Serbian provinces disappear as they became vassals of the Ottoman Empire. Tvrtko continued to repel the Ottomans until his death in 1391.
Continuing into the city I stopped for coffee in Petar Kočić Park, a good spot for people watching.
Moving on I made a stop at the post office of Pošte Srpske (Поште Српске) on Kralja Petra I Karađorđevića to feed my insatiable postcard-sending habit. Bosnia and Herzegovina has three postal services, one for each of the three main ethnic groups in the country. Just because this country is not complicated enough. Pošte Srpske is the Serbian one. Despite the intimidating look of most post offices in former communist nations, once I got to the counter the clerk couldn’t help enough, although she didn’t speak a word of English and I not a word of Serbian. Somehow we managed. A smile goes a long way in any language.
Now just steps away from one of Banja Luka’s main sights, Christ the Savior – Serbian Orthodox Cathedral (Саборни храм Христа Спаситеља) which sits in an attractive square surrounded by impressive looking administrative buildings. The current building is rather new, built in 2004, but it’s a replica of an earlier church.
Not much earlier though. The original church ‘the Holy Trinity Church’ was built between 1925 and 1929, during the early Yugoslav period. It was only consecrated in 1939 and then heavily damaged by German bombing in 1941. The Croatian fascist organisation , the Ustaše, then used forced labourers from the Serb, Jewish and Roma communities to demolish the church brick by brick.
Post-war, the communist authorities erected a memorial to fallen soldiers in place of the church. Then during the Bosnian war, in 1993, the memorial was moved to another location by the Bosnian Serb authorities and building of the new church commenced.
Again, just to complicate matters, another Holy Trinity Church had been rebuilt elsewhere in the city, also a replica of the 1920s church. So the new church on the original site needed a new name, thus it became the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
I have quite a soft spot for Orthodox Churches in general. I might be an avowed atheist, but I can still appreciate the beauty of religious buildings and the importance that they have had, and sometimes still do have, to communities. But somehow the Eastern Orthodox tradition just hits a sweet spot between the austerity of Protestant churches and the over indulgence of the Roman Catholic tradition (yes, I am overgeneralising massively here, sorry) and creates a thing of real beauty. Sometimes the beauty leans heavily upon centuries of history, but here it is just very, very pretty.
Having visited the Serbian Orthodox cathedral of the city, it seemed only fair to make my next stop the Catholic cathedral of Saint Bonaventure nearby. The current, very modern looking, cathedral was built in the early 1970s to replace the previous building which was levelled by an earthquake in 1969. Unfortunately the cathedral was very much locked up and closed to visitors (this turned out to be a theme with catholic places of worship throughout BiH) but it was interesting to see from the outside.
Walking back towards the city centre I came across the Palace of the President of the Republika Srpska. It’s a somewhat severe looking sovietesque building on the corner diagonally opposite the Orthodox Cathedral. A bit more poignant at the time of my visit as the federal Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina had recently issued an arrest warrant for the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik.
My wanderings then took me to two more attractive churches, unfortunately both closed. The first was the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic) and the second the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church of Christ the King (Украјинскa Гркокатоличка Црква Христа Царја / Українська Грекокатолицька Церква Христа Царя). I haven’t been able to find much information on either, but it seems that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is another recent reconstruction, the earlier church having been destroyed in the Second World War and the interior of the new church still not entirely complete, although the structural and exterior decoration was completed in 2010.
By this point it was definitely time for lunch and a beer. It was such a fine sunny day that I wanted to find somewhere to sit outside to eat. I found a very pleasant place called Mek. Very informal, very relaxed and half a litre of local beer and the delicious Banjalučki ćevap cost just 14.80KM. I’m not sure I could find this place again, but if I did I would eat here again.
My plan had been to visit the Museum of the Republika Srpska next. Unfortunately the museum was experiencing a power cut and thus had closed. Moving on, I made my way to the Kastel Fortress.
This medieval fortress is located on the bank of the Vrbas River and there is an attractive pathway between the walls and the river.
The site has seen human activity since long before the medieval period. There is archaeological evidence dating back to pre-Roman times. The records in the early and high Middle Ages is a bit sketchy in this part of the world, but we do know that the first known mention of Banja Luka was in document issued at the Hungarian Royal Court in 1494. The Ottomans captured the fortress in 1527 and the following year the whole area from Jajce to the Sava came under Ottoman rule and Banja Luka became the capital of the new Ottoman province of Bosnian Sandžak-beg.
The fortress was expanded in the early 18th century and was still being used for military purposes until 1959, since then it has been used for various civilian purposes including hosting concerts and it is now home to a swanky restaurant.
There is not a great deal of information available on site here, but entry is free and it’s a pleasant place to spend an hour or so exploring on a fine weather day. Rather than the more formal restaurant, it could really do with a more casual cafe with outdoor seating.
The truly remarkable thing about Kastel Fortress (and in fact the whole of Banja Luka) is that there were virtually no other visitors around. If you transported this castle to Western Europe it would likely have been heaving with tourists on a sunny day in May.
Now if we remember what happened to the first incarnation of the Orthodox cathedral in Banja Luka we see that history repeats itself as ever, but sadly that includes the really vile bits too.
The Ferhadija Mosque is the city’s main Muslim place of worship and a truly beautiful building too, but the current building dates from the 21st century, building have started in 2001 and completed in 2016. The Ottoman era original dated from 1579, built on the orders of Sanjak-bey Ferhad Pasha Sokolović, was destroyed on the night of 6th to 7th May 1993 during the Bosnian war. It was one of 16 mosques in Banja Luka destroyed in a programme of ethnic cleansing by Serb Nationalists. Explosives were used to destroy the building and then local Bosniak muslims were used as forced labour to clear the rubble, echoing the actions of the Croatian fascists in 1941.
On this occasion at least one of the perpetrators was heal to account. In 2004 Radoslav Brđanin was sentenced to 32 years imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the “wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages or devastation not justified by military necessity; destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion” including the destruction of Banja Luka’s Bosniak heritage.
The reconstruction of the current building was, sadly, not without incident. At the ceremony for the laying of a cornerstone in 2001 a mob of Serb nationalists attacked local Bosniaks and officials, including the ambassadors of the United kingdom, Sweden and Pakistan and the head of the United Nations in Bosnia. The attackers threw rocks and burnt vehicles, a bakery, prayer mats and the flag on the Muslim community centre. They also drove a pig onto the site of the mosque as an insult to the Muslim population. It was some hours before the officials were rescued by the Bosnian Serb police and more than 30 were injured by the attackers. That was on 7th May 2001. So it was only fitting that the reopening of the mosque should take place on the same day, 7th May, in 2016.
It’s a lovely building and when I visited I was made very welcome. It was just after prayer time and locals were keen to point out some of the most beautiful features of the decoration of this splendid place.
Finishing my day in Banja Luka, I enjoyed one of my favourite Serbian specialities, Karađorđeva šnicla. It’s a rolled pork, veal or chicken cutlet stuffed with kaymak, then breaded and fried. This was at the Restoran Hedonist, which is what would be called a splav in Belgrade (I don’t know if they use the term here?) on the Vrbas river by the Patra Bridge.
The next morning I departed for Sarajevo, taking the 9am bus with ZAM tours to Sarajevo’s East Bus Station (Istočno Sarajevo). At the Banja Luka bus station you have to pay for a platform ticket to get onto the bus platforms to board your bus. This is in addition to your bus ticket, but it’s only 2KM and pays for the upkeep of the bus station, which is better than most in the country, although the toilets could still do with a lot more attention! Most bus companies will also charge per item for baggage going into the hold, which again is usually 2 to 5KM.
Leave a Reply