SREBRENIK FORTRESS

This gray fortress (Tvrđava Srebrenik) is one of the most beautiful in the country. It is installed on a rocky spur at 400 m above sea level that offers magnificent views of the surroundings. With its strategic position guarding the entrance to the Pannonian plain and the Tinja valley, the site was probably occupied very early. However, the fortress is only mentioned for the first time in 1333. It is then used as a bargaining chip in the conflict between the Serbian king Stefan Dušan and his vassal, the Bosnian ban Stefan II Kotromanić: the latter loses his possessions on the Adriatic coast, but he recovers Srebrenik which he fortified. It is there that his son is born, in 1353, the one who will found the kingdom of Bosnia: Stefan Tvrtko I (1377-1391). But the fortress was captured by the Hungarians in 1408 and became in 1464 the capital of the Hungarian banat of Bosnia. The Ottomans seized it around 1510, installing a garrison and building a mosque. It was then part, with the fortress of Sokol (near Gračanica), of a network of twelve strongholds guarding the border between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. It was finally abandoned in 1835.

Visit. The fortress is reached by road and then, on foot, by a wooden footbridge that spans a wide ditch dug in the rock. The fortifications occupy only a very small area, about 60 m x 30 m. But their concentration is all the more impressive. It consists of three towers connected by sinuous ramparts dominated by a palace and a keep. The first tower, rectangular, guards the entrance and rises to 7,5 m height. It keeps its arch decorated with a crescent moon. An L-shaped rampart (restored in 1954) goes down to the second tower. Semicircular and partly collapsed, it is now only 4 m high. The beautiful section of rampart that follows, in a lace, dates from the Ottoman period with 2.10 m thick walls pierced with openings for seven cannons. The third tower, rectangular, has lost most of its walls. It houses a cistern and a well. This is where the mosque was built, which disappeared in the 19th century. Stairs then lead to the upper part, with a cistern, then the keep. The walls of this one reach nearly 3 m thickness at the base and 6,7 m height. Next to it is the palace (24 x 6.5 m). Built on two floors above a vaulted cellar, it was used as barracks by Ottoman soldiers. A rampart descends in a zigzag pattern to defend the southern access.