OLD TOWN OF TREBINJE

This 2.5-hectare fortified district (Stari Grad/Стари Град) is the historic center of Trebinje. Also known as the Kastel, it is very pleasant with its stone houses, clock tower, two mosques and cobblestone alleys that lead to the Trebišnjica River. If there are cafes, a few restaurants and the museum of Herzegovina, the district is not very lively. The Bosnian inhabitants who were once in the majority here were violently expelled by the Bosnian Serb forces between 1991 and 1993. The mosques were razed and the houses, looted or burned. Despite an expensive reconstruction completed in 2019, most Muslim families have not returned. The district was created by the Ottomans in the early eighteenth century, after the recovery of Trebinje, briefly occupied by the Venetians from 1694 to 1699. It was the Bosnian officer Osman Pasha Resulbegović who financed the work and drew the plans. The old town forms an irregular triangle with a "flattened" point, on the west, along the Platanus Square. On the eastern side, the Trebišnjica River forms the base of this triangle, between the "stone bridge" (Kameni Most) in the north and the Ivo-Andrić Bridge in the south. This complex was closed off to the northeast by a canal that was filled in for fear of malaria in 1928, while the walls, completed in 1728, enclose the rest of the district.

Statuette of Hélène d'Anjou and Angelica's door. Facing the Place des Platanes, the West Gate is the most frequented passageway with a gallery that crosses the ramparts and where a few souvenir stalls await the shopper. Outside, along Dositejeva Street, the southern rampart is adorned with a statuette of the French-born Serbian Orthodox saint Helen of Anjou (1237-1314), given to the city in the 1930s by the poet and diplomat Jovan Dučić. It is accompanied by the following inscription: "In honor of Saint Helen of Anjou, Queen of Serbia, wife of Stefan Uroš and mother of the kings Dragutin and Milutin. In memory of her frequent visits to Trebinje." Inside the walls, near the South Gate, Serbian and Bosnian-Serb tourists mostly crowd in front of the "Angelica Gate", a closed passage between two alleys where an episode of Ranjeni Orao ("wounded eagle") was filmed, a successful series broadcast between 2008 and 2009 by the Serbian national television. Few are interested in the two reconstructed mosques.