Historical, Cultural and Architectural Review of The Travnik

Abstract

Travnik is a town located on the Lasva river in the central part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 90 km west of Sarajevo. In the area of today’s Travnik, on the Lašva river, the prehistoric Illyrian people and then the ancient Romans panned gold here. Preserved material traces and historiographical sources about Travnik bear witness to the long historical continuity of people’s lives in this area. Artifacts over 7,000 years old were found in the river valleys of Bila and Lasva (locality Nebo, Han Bila and Crkvine, Turbe). The settlements belonged to the "Butmir cultural group" and as an archaeological subgroup of monuments. In the Bila valley, a somewhat older Neolithic settlement of the ’Kakan culture group’ was discovered, which was destroyed by river erosion, and in Alihodža traces of the Eneolithic settlement of the ’Vucedol culture’ were found’. In written sources, the parish of Lasva is mentioned for the first time (1244) in the list of bishop’s sermons, and then (1380) in the letter of the Bosnian king Stjepan Tvrtko I (1338-1391) to Hrvoj Vukcic Hrvatinic (1350-1416), in which he appoints him as grand duke and presents mu Bila, Trebeus and Lupnica in Lasva parish. There are several versions about the origin of the name Travnik. According to one of them, the city got its name from the spacious pastures and the word ’grass’, while according to the other version, the name originated from the medieval pre-Ottoman fortress where the clerk collected the ’herbal tax’. The town was first mentioned under the name Travnik (1463) in connection with the events related to the collapse of the Bosnian kingdom.