Travel guide
Bosnia and Herzegovina Travel Guide
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country of mountains and fast green rivers, with its capital, Sarajevo, in a valley ringed by peaks and Mostar, the town of the Old Bridge, in the stony, Mediterranean-influenced south of Herzegovina. The road and the railway between the two follow the Neretva through its canyon for much of the way, which makes that valley the natural backbone of a first visit and the train the scenic way to make the journey. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian past is not kept behind glass here: it is the everyday fabric of the old quarters, the coffee houses and the market lanes. Away from the Neretva line, the country opens into highlands and river valleys that reward a slower second trip.
Updated 2026-09-19
Deep dives
Deep dive
Mostar and Herzegovina: Beyond the Old Bridge →
Mostar's Old Bridge is the famous image, but the valley around it adds a dervish house at a river spring, a walled hill town and medieval tombstones. Seen together, they explain Herzegovina better than an hour on the bridge.
Deep dive
Jajce and Travnik: A Royal Town and a Vizier Town →
Jajce, where the Pliva falls into the Vrbas mid-town, was a seat of Bosnia's medieval kings; Travnik housed the Ottoman viziers who governed Bosnia. Together they hold central Bosnia's two eras of power in one region.
Deep dive
Bosnia and Herzegovina Outdoors: Rivers and Olympic Slopes →
Bosnia and Herzegovina's outdoors divides by season: summer on the Una's travertine falls and rafting rivers, winter on the slopes built for the 1984 Olympics. The ski slopes lie about forty minutes from Sarajevo; the Una runs through the far north-west.
Itinerary
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Stay in Mostar, Then Go North →
Mostar is often seen on a day trip from the Croatian coast, a few hours at the bridge and back over the border. Making it the first night of a one-way route up the Neretva to Sarajevo changes the whole trip.
Ways to Experience This Destination
Mostar's Stari Most, completed in 1566 and rebuilt with stone recovered from the Neretva before reopening in 2004, and the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge at Višegrad, designed by Sinan and finished in 1577, are both UNESCO World Heritage sites. In Mostar the old custom of diving from the parapet into the river carries on.
The Baščaršija bazaar, the Sebilj fountain and Bosnian coffee rituals set the daily rhythm of Sarajevo's old town. The museum on the street corner beside the Latin Bridge marks the site of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the Tunnel of Hope Museum, built around a preserved wartime supply tunnel, offers guided visits for travellers interested in the city's history. In the east of the country, the Srebrenica Memorial Center receives visitors at its visitor centre, with guided tours.
The Una, with the travertine falls of Štrbački buk in Una National Park, and the Neretva are the country's rafting and kayaking rivers. The Kravice waterfalls offer summer swimming beneath the cascades, and Sutjeska National Park protects the Perućica primeval forest.
Počitelj's walled hillside town above the Neretva, Blagaj's dervish house at the spring of the Buna, Travnik, once the seat of Bosnia's Ottoman viziers, and Jajce, a medieval royal town with a waterfall at its heart, sit alongside Sarajevo's Austro-Hungarian avenues and pseudo-Moorish City Hall — a picture of the country that Sarajevo's bazaar and Mostar's bridge only partly convey.
Bjelašnica and Jahorina, where the men's and women's alpine races of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics were held, still run as ski resorts about forty minutes from the capital, and in summer the same highlands turn to meadows, villages and trekking routes.
Ćevapi (grilled minced-meat sausages) in somun flatbread with raw onion, burek (always the meat pie; the cheese version is sirnica), begova čorba (chicken soup) and Bosnian coffee from a džezva — hearty, affordable and full of flavour, with Herzegovina's žilavka and blatina wines in the south.
The stećci, carved medieval tombstones from graveyards such as Radimlja near Stolac, form a World Heritage listing shared with Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, and Vjetrenica Cave near Ravno was added to the World Heritage List in 2024 for its underground biodiversity.
City guides
Frequently asked questions
No. The three official languages are mutually intelligible, English is spoken in tourist areas, and German is also fairly common. A few local words, such as hvala for thank you, are appreciated.
Both. Latin and Cyrillic scripts are in official use — the convertible mark banknotes, for example, carry both scripts — so it pays to recognise a few Cyrillic letters as well as the Latin alphabet.
Yes, a short one. Neum is the country's only town on the Adriatic, on the stretch of coast between the Dubrovnik region and the rest of Croatia, which is why the Croatian coast road passes through it.
Entry rules, visa types and practical notes live on the Bosnia and Herzegovina overview.
Treat this Visaja page as your starting point: verify the current rules directly with the official source before you submit an application.