Corridor: Diagonal Road
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jajce
Type: Fortress
Epoch: Middle Ages
Theme:
World Heritage:

The fortress, which is also often called the “Castle” or “Citadel”, existed before the first reference to the name of Jajce in written sources. The first reference to Jajce in written
sources dates from 1396, when Hrvoje Vukcic Hrvatinic was entitled “conte di Jajcze”. In the
late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the town underwent remarkable political and cultural development, and later, in the last years of the Bosnian state, it became the permanent seat of the last kings of Bosnia. Jajce was also the residence of the last Bosnian King Stjepan Tomasevic, who died in 1463.

Jajce has an outstanding position among the towns of mediaeval Bosnia, as the only fortified urban settlement with all the features of a fifteenth century urban centre. Its architectural monuments are a persuasive illustration of the mediaeval art and diverse political situations in Jajce. In the era of Hrvoje Vukcic, the town was dominated by local builders and their stonemasons’ yard, while at the time of the last Bosnian kings, master craftsmen from Dalmatia were at work in Jajce (the late Gothic of the littoral towns and hints of the early Renaissance). Matthias Corvinus brought master craftsman from the Magyar and Croatian late Gothic to the banovina.

 
Council of Europe, RPSEE