Počitelj

ABOUT THE DESTINATION

Počitelj is a historic fortified village on the left bank of the Neretva river in Herzegovina, between Mostar and the Čapljina plain. It is built into the side of a steep hill in the form of a stone amphitheatre, with houses, a mosque and a clock tower climbing the slope to a medieval fortress on the summit. The first documented reference to Počitelj dates from 1444, and a local tradition attributes the initial fortress to King Tvrtko I in 1383 — a plausible but unproven founding date rather than a documented one. The settlement fell under Ottoman control in 1471, and its surviving urban ensemble developed principally from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Počitelj guarded the Neretva crossing on the road from the sea to the interior, and its surviving fabric — the fortress, the Šišman Ibrahim-paša (Hadži Alija) Mosque, the sahat-kula clock tower and the old stone houses — makes it one of the most complete Ottoman-period ensembles in the country. It has been on the UNESCO Tentative List since 2007 and has hosted an art colony since the 1960s. For a visitor it is a single, walkable hillside — a place to climb, to photograph and to read the layered medieval and Ottoman past of Herzegovina.