Colin Ross

Dubrovnik is very nice, but it has been far too hot and far too full of tourists to fully enjoy it fully.

UNESCO inscribed the Old City of Dubrovnik as a World Heritage Site in 1979 recognising its outstanding medieval architecture and fortifications. Some of Game of Thrones was filmed here, but I am not enough of a geek to have spotted the locations.

The history of the city probably dates back to the 7th century, when the town known as Ragusa was founded by refugees from Epidaurum.

It was originally under protectorate of the Byzantine Empire and later under the sovereignty of the Republic of Venice. Between the 14th and 19th centuries, Dubrovnik ruled itself as a free state.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Dubrovnik was occupied by the French Empire forces, and then the Republic of Ragusa was abolished and incorporated into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and later into the Illyrian Provinces of France. From the early 19th to early 20th centuries, Dubrovnik was part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia within the Austrian Empire.

Dubrovnik became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia immediately upon its creation, before becoming part of the Banovina of Croatia upon its creation in 1939. During World War II, it was part of the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state, before being reincorporated into the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

It turns out the Trump family have plans to build Trump Tower Belgrade on the site 😒

Today’s excursion was to Our Lady of the Rocks in Perast, just a short bus ride from Kotor.

Our Lady of the Rocks is one of the two islets, the other being Sveti Đorđe Island. It is an artificial island created by bulwark of rocks and by sinking old and seized ships loaded with rocks.

According to legend, the islet was made over the centuries by local seamen who kept an ancient oath after finding the icon of Madonna and Child on the rock in the sea on 22 July 1452.

I am currently in Kotor, in Montenegro 🇲🇪

It was founded in around 5th Century BC, with its fortifications built during the Venetian period.

It is a lovely old walled town full of churches and lovely buildings.

It was a trading port with access to the Adriatic Sea. It is clearly now a tourist town.

The city, first mentioned in 168 BC, was settled during ancient Roman times, when it was known as Acruvium, Ascrivium, or Ascruvium.

The city has been fortified since the early Middle Ages, when Emperor Justinian built a fortress above Ascrivium in 535, after expelling the Ostrogoths.

Ascrivium was plundered by the Saracens in 840. It was further fortified towards the peak of Saint Ivan by Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in the 10th century.

It was one of the more influential Dalmatian city-states, initially with a Romance-speaking population, as throughout the early Middle Ages, and until the 11th century the Dalmatian language was still spoken in Kotor. The city was part of Byzantine Dalmatia in that period, and the modern name of Kotor probably originated in the Byzantine name for the city: Dekatera or Dekaderon.

In 1002, the city suffered damage under the occupation of the First Bulgarian Empire, and in the following year it was ceded to Duklja by the Bulgarian Tsar Samuil. Duklja, or Dioclea, was a vassal duchy of the Bulgarian Empire at the time. The local population resisted the pact and, taking advantage of its alliance with Dubrovnik, maintained its high autonomy.

The city was conquered in 1185 by Stefan Nemanja, the ruler of the Grand Principality of Serbia. Under the rule of the Nemanjić, Kotor became a partially autonomous city, enjoying many privileges and maintaining its republican institutions. This is evidenced by a statute from 1301, which demonstrates that Kotor had the status of a city under Serbian rule.

Kotor remained the most important trading port of subsequent Serb states – Kingdom of Serbia and Serbian Empire, up to its downfall in 1371.

After the fracturing of the Serbian Empire, the city was taken by the Kingdom of Hungary, only to change hands repeatedly between them and the Republic of Venice in the period between 1371 and 1384. After that, Kotor was held by the Kingdom of Bosnia under Tvrtko I Kotromanić between 1384 and 1391. The king of Bosnia, who claimed the Serbian throne, minted his coins in Kotor.

After the death of Tvrtko in 1391, Kotor became fully independent, until the administration, wary of the looming Ottoman danger, asked Venice for protection. The city acknowledged the suzerainty of Venice in 1420.

The city was part of the Venetian Albania province of the Venetian Republic from 1420 to 1797.

Four centuries of Venetian domination have given the city the typical Venetian architecture, that contributes to make Kotor a UNESCO world heritage site.

Under Venetian rule, Kotor was besieged by the Ottoman Empire in 1538 and 1657, endured the plague in 1572, and was nearly destroyed by earthquakes in 1563 and 1667.

After the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, it passed to the Habsburg monarchy. However, in 1805, it was assigned to the French Empire's client state, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, by the Treaty of Pressburg, although in fact held by a Russian squadron under Dmitry Senyavin. After the Russians retreated, Kotor was united in 1806 with this Kingdom of Italy and then in 1810 with the French Empire's Illyrian Provinces. Kotor was captured by the British in an attack on the Bay led by Commodore John Harper in the brig sloop HMS Saracen (18 guns). To seal off Kotor, residents along the shore literally pulled the ship in windless conditions with ropes. Saracen's crew later hauled naval 18-pounder guns above Fort St. John, the fortress near Kotor, and were reinforced by Captain William Hoste with his ship HMS Bacchante (38 guns). The French garrison had no alternative but to surrender, which it did on 5 January 1814. It was restored to the Habsburgs by the Congress of Vienna.

During World War I, Cattaro was one of three main bases of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the home port of the Austrian Fifth Fleet, consisting of pre-dreadnought battleships and light cruisers, and a base for Austrian and German submarines. After 1918, the city became a part of Yugoslavia and officially became known as Kotor.

Between 1941 and 1943 the Kingdom of Italy annexed the area of Kotor which became one of three provinces of the Italian Governorate of Dalmatia. After the War Kotor became part of Yugoslavia.

The vast majority of my photographs from Mostar are of, or from, the ‘Old’ Bridge - for a good reason. The Bridge and its destruction is what most people think of when they think of Mostar.

Mostar the administrative centre of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the historical capital of Herzegovina. It is the fifth largest city in the country and was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva during the Ottoman era.

The Old Bridge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's most visited landmarks, and is considered an exemplary piece of Islamic architecture in the Balkans.

Mostar was also the capital of the predominantly Croat proto-state known as the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War.

Mostar is said to have been founded in 1452, although settlements on the river Neretva, between Mount Hum and the Velež Mountain, have existed since prehistory, as witnessed by discoveries of fortified enceintes and cemeteries. Evidence of Roman occupation was discovered beneath the present town.

In the early 15th century the county of Večenike covered the site of present-day Mostar along the right bank of the Neretva, including the sites of Zahum, Cim, Ilići, Raštani and Vojno. In 1408 this county belonged to Juraj Radivojević, who built Cim Fort.

In 1468 the region came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and the urbanization of the settlement began. It was named Köprühisar, meaning fortress at the bridge.

The town was fortified between the years 1520 and 1566, and the wooden bridge rebuilt in stone. In 1519 the settlement was recorded as a castle and both as Mostar and as Köprühisar and it was inhabited by Muslims and Christians.

The stone bridge, the Old Bridge (Stari most), was erected in 1566 on the orders of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and at 28m long and 20m high, quickly became a wonder in its own time.

The first church in the city of Mostar, a Serbian Orthodox Church, was built in 1834 during Ottoman rule.

Austria-Hungary took control over Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 and ruled the region until the aftermath of World War I in 1918, when it became part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and then Yugoslavia.

During this period, Mostar was the main urban centre of Herzegovina. In 1881, the town became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mostar-Duvno.

In 1939, it became a part of the Banovina of Croatia. During World War II, Mostar was annexed into the Nazi German fascist puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia.

When the German and Italian Zones of Influence were revised on 24 June 1942, Mostar fell in Zone II [hr], administered civilly by Croatia but militarily by Italy. Following the war Bosnia and Herzegovina remained part of Yugoslavia.

After Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in April 1992, the town was besieged by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), following clashes between the JNA and Croat forces. The Croats were organized into the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and were joined by a sizable number of Bosniaks. The JNA artillery periodically shelled neighbourhoods outside of their control from early April.

On 7 June the Croatian Army (HV) launched an offensive code named Operation Jackal, the objective of which was to relieve Mostar and break the JNA siege of Dubrovnik. The offensive was supported by the HVO, which attacked the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) positions around Mostar. By 12 June the HVO secured the western part of the city and by 21 June the VRS was completely pushed out from the eastern part.

Throughout late 1992, tensions between Croats and Bosniaks increased in Mostar. In early 1993 the Croat–Bosniak War escalated and by mid-April 1993 Mostar had become a divided city with the western part dominated by HVO forces and the eastern part controlled by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH). Fighting broke out in May when both sides of the city came under intense artillery fire. The city was divided along ethnic lines, with a number of offensives taking place, resulting in a series of stalemates. The Croat–Bosniak conflict ended with the signing of the Washington Agreement in 1994, and the Bosnian War ended with the Dayton Agreement in 1995. Around 2,000 people died in Mostar during the war and the Old Bridge destroyed.

Since the end of the wider war in 1995, great progress has been made in the reconstruction of the city of Mostar. Over 15 million dollars has been spent on restoration.

A monumental project to rebuild the Old Bridge, which was destroyed during the Bosnian War by HVO, to the original design, and restore surrounding structures and historic neighbourhoods was initiated in 1999 and mostly completed by spring 2004. The money for this reconstruction was donated by Spain, the United States, Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands, and Croatia. A grand opening was held on 23 July 2004 under heavy security.

After Sarajevo, I visited Tito’s Bunker - or Armijska Ratna Komanda D-0 to give it its proper name - a Cold War-era nuclear bunker and military command centre located near the town of Konjic.

I was last in Sarajevo about 15 years, when I was doing some political training with Miranda Roberts, Alex Folkes and Ed Fordham. I was intrigued how it may have changed in the last decade and a half.

The answer is it got a bit more commercial, and the place now has lots of tourists. Something I predicted might happen. Sadly it has, as a result, lost some of its charm.

Sarajevo has had quite the history, but is now a thriving capital city - albeit a small one with around a quarter of a million people within its administrative area.

Sarajevo is sometimes called the "Jerusalem of Europe" or "Jerusalem of the Balkans". It is one of a few major European cities to have a mosque, Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, and synagogue within the same neighborhood.

Although there is evidence of human settlement in the area since prehistoric times, the modern city arose in the 15th century as an Ottoman stronghold when the Ottoman Empire extended into Europe. It is mainly known for its part in two major wars and if you are British for Torvill and Dean’s performance at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

In 1914, Sarajevo was the site of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a local Young Bosnia activist Gavrilo Princip, a murder that sparked World War I. This led to the end of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and the creation of the multicultural Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the Balkans.

After World War II, Sarajevo was designated the capital of the communist Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

After the start of the Yugoslav Wars, the city endured the longest siege of a capital city in modern history, lasting 1,425 days from April 1992 to February 1996, during the Bosnian War.

When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia and achieved United Nations recognition, Serbian leaders declared a new Serbian national state Republika Srpska which was carved out from the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Army of Republika Srpska encircled Sarajevo with a siege force of 18,000 stationed in the surrounding hills, from which they assaulted the city with artillery, mortars, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine guns, multiple rocket launchers, rocket-launched aircraft bombs, and sniper rifles.

From 2 May 1992, the Serbs blockaded the city. The Bosnian government defense forces inside the besieged city were poorly equipped and unable to break the siege. During the siege, 11,541 people were killed, including over 1,500 children. An additional 56,000 people were wounded, including nearly 15,000 children.

When the siege ended, the concrete scars caused by mortar shell explosions left marks that were filled with red resin. After the red resin was placed, it left floral patterns, which led to them being dubbed Sarajevo Roses.

Division of the territory according to the Dayton Agreement resulted in a mass exodus in early 1996 of some 62,000 Sarajevo Serbs from the city and its suburbs, creating today's more monoethnic post-war city.

Sarajevo City Hall, also known as Vijećnica, was initially the largest and most representative building of the Austro-Hungarian period in Sarajevo.

It was designed in 1891 by the Czech architect Karel Pařík, but criticisms by the minister, Baron Béni Kállay, caused him to stop working on the project. It was completed in 1896 by Ćiril Iveković.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg attended a reception at the town hall on Sunday 28 June 1914. Following the reception they left in a motorcade and were both fatally shot near the Latin Bridge by Gavrilo Princip.

In 1949 it was handed over to the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On 25 August 1992, Serb shelling during the Siege of Sarajevo caused the complete destruction of the library; among the losses were about 700 manuscripts and incunabula and a unique collection of Bosnian serial publications, some from the middle of the 19th century Bosnian cultural revival. Before the attack, the library held 1.5 million volumes and over 155,000 rare books and manuscripts.

There are many mosques in Sarajevo.

The first one I attempted to visit (it took three trips to actually get inside) was the Emperor’s Mosque.

The Emperor’s Mosque was completed in 1457 CE, it was the first mosque built after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia. Built in the classical Ottoman style, it is the largest single-subdome mosque in the country.

The other main mosque is the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque. It was built in the 16th century, and is the largest historical mosque in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one of the most representative Ottoman structures in the Balkans.

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. It is also the third-most populous city on the river Danube.

Belgrade is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe.

It was originally inhabited by the Thraco-Dacians and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the city, naming it Singidūn.

It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and awarded Roman city rights in the mid-2nd century.

It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary before it became the seat of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin in 1284. It returned to the Hungarian Crown in 1427.

Belgrade was eventually conquered by the Ottomans in 1521, previous attempts included the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. It then frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars.

The Church of Saint Sava is another must see in Belgrade.

The Church of Saint Sava is a Serbian Orthodox Church and the fourth largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world and one of the largest churches in the world by gross volume.

Belgrade Fortress is one of the ‘must sees’ in Belgrade.

The fortress sits on the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. The original structure dates to 279BC, but has been reconstructed in 535, 1403 and 1723-36.

It has been the site of many battles, including 1440, 1456, 1521, 1688, 1690, 1717, 1739, 1789 and 1806.

The first mention of the city is when it was founded in the 3rd century BC as "Singidunum" by the Celtic tribe of Scordisci, who had defeated Thracian and Dacian tribes that previously lived in and around the fort. The city-fortress was later conquered by the Romans, was known as Singidunum and became a part of "the military frontier", where the Roman Empire bordered "barbarian Central Europe".

In the period between 378 AD and 441 the Roman camp was repeatedly destroyed in the invasions by the Goths and the Huns. Legend says that Attila's grave lies at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube (under the fortress).

In 476 Belgrade again became the border between the empires: the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), and the Slav-Avar State in the north.

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I rebuilt the fortress around 535.In the following centuries the fortress suffered continuous destruction under the Avar sieges.

The fortress kept changing its masters: Bulgaria during three centuries, and then the Byzantines and then again Bulgarians. The fortress remained a Byzantine stronghold until the 12th century when it fell in the hands of the newly emerging Serbian state. It became a border city of the Serbian Kingdom, later Empire with Hungary. The Hungarian king Béla I gave the fortress to Serbia in the 11th century as a wedding gift (his son married the Serbian princess Jelena), but it remained effectively part of Hungary, except for the period 1282–1319.

Belgrade remained in Serbian hands for almost a century. After the Despot's death in 1427, it had to be returned to Hungary. An attempt by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1456 to conquer the fortress was prevented by Janos Hunyadi (Siege of Belgrade), saving Hungary from Ottoman dominion for 70 years.

In 1521, 132 years after the Battle of Kosovo, the fortress, like most parts of the Serbian state, was conquered by the Turks and remained (with short periods of the Austrian and Serbian occupation), under the rule of the Ottoman Empire until the year 1867, when the Turks withdrew from Belgrade and Serbia. During the short period of Austrian rule (1718–1738), the fortress was largely rebuilt and modernized.

After Austria lost the Austro-Turkish War of 1737–1739, northern Serbia, including Belgrade, was returned to the Turks. One of the provisions of the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade stated that Austria had to demolish all the fortifications and military and civilian building it had constructed during the occupation. Many Baroque buildings were demolished within the fortress.

After the Ottomans fully evacuated the inner fortress in 1867, Serbian troops took over, but as the state was still only autonomous (full independence was achieved in 1878), Serbia was only to "manage it" and was not acknowledged as the proprietor of the fortress by the neighboring Austria-Hungary.

The fortress and the park were damaged during World War I. Serbian army had no proper weaponry to fight the Austro-Hungarian gunboats, so they freely fired at the city from the Sava. The city was especially damaged during the heavy bombardment in 1914–1915.

The first stop in Serbia was Novi Sad.

Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia and the administrative center of the (formerly autonomous) province of Vojvodina.

Novi Sad was founded in 1694, when Serb merchants formed a colony across the Danube from the Petrovaradin Fortress, a strategic Habsburg military post. In subsequent centuries, it became an important trading, manufacturing and cultural centre.

Budapest was certainly worth a visit.

The Buda side and the Pest side are quite different, I couldn’t tell you where Óbuda actually was.

Budapest formed in 1873 when Buda, Pest and Óbuda merged.

The history of Budapest began with an early Celtic settlement transformed by the Romans into the town of Aquincum, capital of Lower Pannonia in the 1st century.

Following the foundation of Hungary in the late 9th century, the area was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241. It became the royal seat in 1361,with Buda becoming one of the European centers of renaissance culture by the 15th century under Matthias Corvinus.

The siege of Buda in 1541 was followed by nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, and after the reconquest of Buda in 1686, the region entered a new age of prosperity.

By the time the three cities merged Budapest had become the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

St. Stephen’s Basilica, Akademia, the Opera House and Heroes’ Square.

St. Stephen’s Basilica is named in honour of Stephen, the first King of Hungary (c. 975–1038). It is the co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest and the third largest church building in present-day Hungary (the largest church in Budapest).