REGIONAL MUSEUM OF TRAVNIK

Founded in 1950, this museum (Zavičajni Muzej Travnik) has been housed since 1975 in a former Rockefeller Foundation dispensary from 1928. It could use a facelift, but overall it is quite interesting. The building is flanked on its left by a small train set consisting of two wagons and an Austrian locomotive from 1893. This is a reminder that Travnik was an important railway junction before the traffic was closed in 1979. Inside, the museum has four collections. The first, devoted to natural history, is one of the most important in the country: naturalized animals, fossils, shells, stones and minerals from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from around the world. It was mainly composed by the Austrian Jesuit priest and botanist Erich von Brandis (1834-1921), founder of the first (Catholic) high school in Travnik in 1882. The archaeology collection includes objects dated from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages: ceramics, tools, weapons, jewelry, coins... Note in particular rare stećci bearing inscriptions in bosančica (Cyrillic alphabet). The history collection, for its part, focuses on the Ottoman period, in particular the years 1699-1832, when Travnik was the capital of the province of Bosnia: decorated weapons, clothing, reconstruction of a Bosnian bedroom, Serbian Orthodox icon, etc. Finally, the fourth part of the museum houses an exhibition of photographs on the customs of the region.