Trebinje,
"the city of the sun and platane (plane) trees", is one of the most
beautiful in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Located
in East Herzegovina, the Trebišnjica River flows through the heart of the city.
The city's old town quarter dates to the 18th-century Ottoman period, and
includes the Arslanagić Bridge. The town commanded the road from Ragusa (Dubrovnic)
to Constantinople, which was traversed in 1096 by the crusaders. It belonged to the Serbian Empire until 1355. Trebinje was the largest town in Serb-held eastern
Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. Controlled
by Bosnian Serb forces from the fall of 1991, it served as a major command and
artillery base by Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) troops besieging Dubrovnik. In 1992 Trebinje was declared the capital of the
self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Region of Herzegovina. Many of the town's Bosniak residents were
subsequently conscripted to fight with the JNA, and many fighting-age Bosniak
men fled the region in order to avoid being drafted. Ten of the town's mosques were razed to the
ground during the war.
From the
city center a 2 road winds up the hill Crkvina to the church "Hercegovacka
Gracanica" a copy of the famous Gračanica monastery in Kosovo. The Trebinje version was erected in 2000 with
funds from a Serbian-American businessman, Branko Tupanjac, to house the bones
of local poet-hero Jovan Dučić (1871–1943).
When he died on April 7, 1943 he was buried in the Serbian Orthodox
monastery of Saint Sava in Libertyville, Illinois. He had expressed in his will to be buried in
his hometown of Trebinje, a goal that was finally realized when he was reburied
here on October 22, 2000.
