Trebinje is the Mediterranean surprise of Bosnia and Herzegovina: a sunny town of century-old plane trees, vineyards and pale stone, a stone's throw from Dubrovnik but at half the prices and without the crowds. Here the pace slows down: people spend their afternoons under the trees on the square, in cafés where an espresso costs little more than a euro, and the Ottoman old town invites you to get lost among little lanes and walls.
It is also a land of wine and monasteries. On the hills around the town stand the Hercegovačka Gračanica —a recent but picture-perfect Byzantine-style church with spectacular views— and the old Tvrdoš Monastery, where the monks produce native Vranac and Žilavka wines that you can taste. Through the valley winds the Trebišnjica, one of the longest underground rivers in Europe, crossed by the elegant Ottoman Arslanagić Bridge.
This guide tells you how to make the most of Trebinje today: what to see in the old town and on the hills, how much things cost (it is one of the cheapest places in the region), how to get there from Dubrovnik or Mostar, and why it is worth staying the night instead of coming for just a few hours. A town to savour slowly, with a glass of local wine in hand.
Trebinje appears in Byzantine sources as Tribunia (Travunia), a medieval Slavic principality. It was part of the medieval Serbian kingdom, fell under Ottoman rule in 1466 and became a stronghold of Herzegovina; its walled Kastel and the Arslanagić Bridge date from that period. In 1878 it passed to Austro-Hungarian administration, which turned it into an elegant garrison town of tree-lined streets, squares and schools. It gave the world the great poet and diplomat Jovan Dučić (1871-1943). After the Yugoslav 20th century and the war of the 1990s, today it is the cultural capital of southern Republika Srpska. The full story —medieval Travunia, the Ottomans, Tvrdoš, the Austrians, Dučić and the present— is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The rocky, Mediterranean south of the country: Herzegovina, home of Mostar's Stari Most, the turquoise Neretva river, dervishes, vineyards and pilgrimages.
Read the history of Herzegovina (Mostar, Blagaj, Trebinje) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 9 activities in Dubrovnik. 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.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before there were mosques, monasteries or plane trees in the square, the Trebinje area already had a name and some weight. Byzantine geographers, among them Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century, refer to it as Travunia or Tribunia. It was a small Slavic principality covering the mountainous hinterland just behind the Adriatic coast, between today's Dubrovnik and the Bay of Kotor. The town's current name comes from that old one.
Travunia was frontier land. It was too far inland to be truly coastal and Adriatic, and too close to the sea to break away from it. It fell within the orbit of neighbouring Raška (the core of the future Serbian state) and of the powerful maritime republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). For centuries it had an intense relationship with Ragusa, made up of both trade and conflict. The caravans linking the Balkan interior with the port of Ragusa passed through these valleys, and Trebinje lived largely off that traffic.
In the Middle Ages the region was gradually absorbed into the medieval Serbian kingdom of the Nemanjić dynasty. Later it became part of the lands of the Kosača, the powerful family that ruled Herzegovina in the 15th century. In fact, the name 'Herzegovina' itself comes from the title of duke (herzog in German) taken by Stjepan Vukčić Kosača: 'the land of the herzog'. Trebinje was one of the strongholds of that mountainous duchy, which was Catholic and Orthodox at the same time and held out until the Ottoman advance.
In 1466, a few years after the fall of the Kingdom of Bosnia (1463), the Ottomans took control of Herzegovina and Trebinje. The town stayed under Turkish rule for more than four centuries, until 1878. It was a decisive period that shaped the face the town still has today.
On top of the medieval fortress of Ban Vir, the Ottomans built a walled enclosure, the Kastel or Stari Grad, on the western bank of the Trebišnjica. This is the old town you visit today, with its gates, its little streets and its Ottoman mosque. In the 16th century they also built the elegant Arslanagić Bridge over the river. It is attributed to the circle of the grand vizier Mehmed-paša Sokolović, the same patron behind the famous bridge at Višegrad. The town was laid out as a stronghold and a marketplace (čaršija) on the road to Ragusa.
But Trebinje was also a centre of resistance. A few kilometres away stands the Orthodox monastery of Tvrdoš, built on top of a 4th-century church and rebuilt in the 16th. From the late 16th century it became the centre of anti-Ottoman activity in Herzegovina and the seat of its Orthodox metropolitans. The region suffered raids by the Uskoks of Senj and by bands of hajduci (outlaws and rebels) who harassed Turkish rule. The Venetians destroyed Tvrdoš in 1694 during the wars of the time, and it was only rebuilt in 1924. Today its monks keep the site's old winemaking tradition alive, making the Vranac and Žilavka wines you can taste in the shade of its vineyards.
In 1878, after the Congress of Berlin, Bosnia and Herzegovina passed from Ottoman hands to the administration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which formally annexed it in 1908. Trebinje sat on the Empire's southern border, facing the Kingdom of Montenegro, so for the town the change meant a deep transformation.
The Austro-Hungarians turned Trebinje into an elegant garrison town. They built barracks and a chain of fortifications on the surrounding hills to watch the Montenegrin border. Among them was the imposing Strač fortress, built between 1910 and 1916 and one of the largest in the Monarchy. They also modernised the town in the Central European style. They laid out the main street and opened squares, schools and parks. They planted tobacco in the surrounding area and, above all, planted the plane trees that now shade the square and have become a symbol of Trebinje. That mix of Austrian town planning and Mediterranean climate shaped the quiet, leafy town we know today.
Trebinje's most famous son came out of the town at the turn of the century: Jovan Dučić (1871-1943). He was one of the great Serbian modernist poets and a distinguished Yugoslav diplomat who served as ambassador in nine European cities. His Serbian patriotism got him into trouble with the Austro-Hungarian authorities, but his literary reputation was enormous. Over his lifetime he built up a valuable collection of art and books, which he left to his home town and which is now in the Museum of Herzegovina. Dučić asked to be buried in Trebinje. His remains were brought back from the United States in 2000 and now rest in the Hercegovačka Gračanica, which was built precisely to honour that wish.
After the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Trebinje became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later called Yugoslavia. Like much of Herzegovina, it went through the tensions of a young, multi-ethnic country. The Second World War was extremely harsh in these mountains. The region came under Italian occupation and the Independent State of Croatia. It became the scene of a brutal war between the Ustaše, the Chetniks and Tito's Partisans, and the massacres and reprisals left deep wounds in local communities.
After the war, Trebinje was part of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, within the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These were decades of relative peace and some development. The dams on the Trebišnjica were built in this period, which meant, for example, that the Arslanagić Bridge had to be moved stone by stone in 1965-1966 to save it from the rising reservoir. The town grew as the regional centre of southern Herzegovina.
The break-up of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War (1992-1995) hit the region again. Trebinje ended up in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity that emerged from the conflict. It suffered the ethnic tensions of the war: part of its non-Serb population left, and heritage was destroyed, including Ottoman mosques that were later rebuilt. It was a bitter time, and its scars can still be felt in the town's memory.
Today's Trebinje has reinvented itself as one of the most peaceful and charming getaways in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the cultural capital of southern Republika Srpska and rests on three pillars: its sunny climate (it boasts more than 260 days of sunshine a year), its winemaking tradition, and its closeness to tourist-heavy Dubrovnik, just 30 kilometres away.
Tourism has grown wisely, without the crowds of the coast. More and more travellers are finding out that they can sleep in Trebinje for half the price of Dubrovnik and visit the Dalmatian city on day trips. The Herzegovina wine route, with Tvrdoš, Vukoje and other wineries, also draws wine-tourism fans looking for the local Vranac and Žilavka grapes. The hilltop monasteries, starting with the Hercegovačka Gračanica, have become tourist attractions as well as spiritual ones, with views that take in the whole town and its valley.
Today Trebinje offers a rare combination of deep history and a relaxed atmosphere. You can spend the morning among Ottoman walls and monasteries, the afternoon tasting wine among the vineyards and the evening under the century-old plane trees in the square, with a very cheap coffee in front of you and no rush at all. For many travellers it is the brightest and friendliest face of Herzegovina, and proof that some of the best spots in the Balkans are still the least crowded.
