For a century and a half, Travnik was the capital of Ottoman Bosnia, the city from which seventy-seven viziers governed the province on behalf of the sultan. That past glory left a rich legacy: elegant mosques, viziers' tombs under stone domes, Ottoman clock towers and the atmosphere of a faded former capital, with a melancholy charm unlike anywhere else in the country.
For literature lovers, it is also a pilgrimage: Ivo Andrić, the only writer from the region to win the Nobel Prize (1961), was born here in 1892. His novel 'Bosnian Chronicle' (also published as 'The Days of the Consuls') portrays the life of this very city in the Napoleonic years, when the French and the Austrians opened consulates in the seat of the viziers. His birth house is now a museum.
And in the middle of the old town, at the foot of the fortress, Plava Voda ('blue water') wells up: a crystal-clear spring with little bridges, cafés and the murmur of cool water, where the people of Travnik spend their summer afternoons. This guide tells you what to see, how much it costs (very little), how to get there from Sarajevo and why Travnik deserves more than a quick stop on the way to Jajce.
Travnik began as a medieval Bosnian stronghold with its 14th-15th century fortress. But its golden age came with the Ottomans: between 1699 and 1850 it was the capital of the Eyalet (province) of Bosnia and the seat of the viziers, hence its nickname 'city of viziers'. In those years, portrayed by Ivo Andrić in 'Bosnian Chronicle', France and Austria opened consulates in the city. Andrić, the future Nobel laureate in Literature, was born here in 1892. After the Austro-Hungarian period, the Yugoslav 20th century and the war of the 90s, Travnik keeps its Ottoman old town and its literary fame. The full story — medieval Bosnia, the viziers, the consuls, Andrić and the present day — is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Cities of kings, viziers and partisans: Jajce and its royal castle, Travnik, birthplace of a Nobel laureate, and Banja Luka, capital of Republika Srpska.
Read the history of The west and north (Jajce, Travnik, Banja Luka) →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 6 activities in Sarajevo. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Sarajevo, 59 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it was capital of anything, Travnik was a stronghold wedged into a narrow valley. The Lašva river, Mount Vlašić and the wooded slopes form a natural corridor through central Bosnia, and whoever controlled that pass controlled one of the country's main arteries. That logic gave rise to the Stari grad fortress, built between the late 14th and early 15th centuries, in the days of the medieval Kingdom of Bosnia.
Even the town's name has a green, rural feel: 'trava' means 'grass' in the South Slavic languages, and Travnik suggests a place of meadows and pastures, like the ones that still cover nearby Mount Vlašić. The town is first mentioned in the 15th century, when it was already a fortified site of some importance in the Bosnia of the last kings.
With the Ottoman conquest, completed in this region over the course of the 15th century, Travnik passed to the Empire, and its new rulers adapted and strengthened the fortress. For a while it was just one more Ottoman stronghold in inland Bosnia, with no special role. Nothing suggested that this mountain town was about to become, through a twist of imperial history, the capital of the whole province and the seat of Ottoman power in Bosnia.
Travnik's great moment came at the end of the 17th century. After the wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian coalition (the Holy League), and the Ottoman loss of territory in Hungary and Slavonia sealed by the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), the capital of the Ottoman province of Bosnia moved from vulnerable Sarajevo, which was exposed and had been sacked by an Austrian raid in 1697, to the better-sheltered Travnik, protected by its mountains.
For a century and a half, from 1699 to 1850, Travnik was the capital of the Eyalet (later Pashalik) of Bosnia and the residence of its governors, the viziers. Some seventy-seven viziers are thought to have governed the province from here in the sultan's name. The town filled up with the architecture of power: elegant mosques, two clock towers (sahat-kula), a rare luxury for a town of its size, madrasas, hammams, fountains and turbes, the domed stone mausoleums where viziers and notables were laid to rest. The jewel of that era is the Šarena džamija ('painted mosque'), built in 1815. It is unique in Bosnia for its colourful floral and geometric decoration and for the shops built into its base.
That cosmopolitan Travnik, a provincial capital in a declining empire, even drew the attention of the European powers: during the Napoleonic Wars, France and Austria opened consulates here, and their consuls schemed at the vizier's court. A century later, that world of diplomats, merchants, clergy and officials in a remote mountain town would become the material for one of the great novels of Yugoslav literature.
On 9 October 1892, a boy named Ivo Andrić was born in Travnik's Zenjak neighbourhood. His family was poor, and he spent much of his childhood in Višegrad, in the shadow of the famous bridge over the Drina, but Travnik remained his birthplace. Andrić studied, joined the Yugoslav nationalist movement as a young man (he was imprisoned after the 1914 Sarajevo assassination) and went on to a double career as a diplomat and a writer.
In 1961 Ivo Andrić received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only one awarded to date to a writer from this part of Europe. The Swedish Academy mainly honoured his great Bosnian trilogy, written during the Second World War: 'The Bridge on the Drina' (set in Višegrad), 'Bosnian Chronicle' (also translated as 'The Days of the Consuls') and 'The Woman from Sarajevo'. In 'Bosnian Chronicle', Andrić recreated exactly that world of the city of the viziers in Napoleonic times, with its French and Austrian consuls caught up in the life of an Ottoman provincial capital. He masterfully captured the clash of cultures, religions and empires that shaped Bosnia.
Today the house where Andrić was born is a memorial museum, open since 1974, with an exhibition on his life and work. For Travnik, being the birthplace of the region's only Nobel laureate is a source of pride that adds to its Ottoman heritage: the city of the viziers is also the city of the writer who told the story of this Balkan crossroads, in all its complexity, better than anyone.
In 1850 the capital of Bosnia moved back to Sarajevo, and Travnik lost its status as the seat of power. It became an elegant provincial town with an air of faded grandeur. In 1878, with the end of Ottoman rule and the start of Austro-Hungarian administration, the town entered the Central European orbit: the new rulers put up administrative buildings, schools and barracks and modernised some of the infrastructure, adding an Austrian layer on top of the Ottoman heritage.
After the First World War and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Travnik became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. Like all of Bosnia, it suffered badly in the Second World War. It fell under the Independent State of Croatia, and the occupation, persecution and guerrilla warfare that ravaged the country between 1941 and 1945 reached the town too. Those tragic years left deep wounds in the local communities.
After the war, Travnik became part of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, within the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These were decades of relative calm and some industrialisation, and the town kept its Ottoman old quarter and its literary fame. Nearby Mount Vlašić grew into a ski and grazing destination, and Vlašić cheese became famous throughout Yugoslavia.
The break-up of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War (1992-1995) hit central Bosnia and the Lašva valley hard. The valley saw some of the harshest episodes of the conflict, especially the 1993 fighting between Bosniak and Croat forces. Travnik, with its mixed population, took in thousands of refugees and displaced people and lived through the tension and violence of those years. The changes they brought to its population persist today.
When the war ended with the Dayton Agreement (1995), Travnik became the capital of the Central Bosnia Canton, within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The post-war years brought reconstruction and, little by little, the recovery of its heritage and cultural life. The town restored its mosques, its fortress and its historic centre, and built up its tourism on two big strengths: its Ottoman heritage as the city of the viziers and its status as the birthplace of Ivo Andrić.
Today Travnik is a near-essential stop on the cultural route through central Bosnia, between Sarajevo and Jajce. Visitors find a town on a human scale, with the medieval fortress up on the hill, the painted mosque and the viziers' turbes in the old quarter, the Plava Voda spring for summer afternoons and a Nobel laureate's house open to the public. This former capital lost its power a century and a half ago but has kept, intact, the blend of melancholy and charm typical of places that were once the centre of the world and today simply invite you to wander slowly.
