Kupres

The Story Behind the Place

Kupres is a high karst plateau town and municipality in Canton 10 of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, set on Kupreško polje at roughly 1,100 to 1,200 metres above sea level and ringed by the mountains of Stožer, Vitorog, Lunjevača and Čajuša. This record represents Kupres town and municipality in Canton 10 (FBiH), not the separate Kupres municipality in Republika Srpska. The plateau has long supported a pastoral highland economy based on seasonal grazing and hay production, and that economy remains central to the town’s identity. The grass-mowing competition custom locally associated with Dani kosidbe, known as Strljanica, was inscribed in 2020 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — it is intangible cultural heritage, not a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Kupres is not presented here as a World Heritage property. The plateau’s elevation and exposure give it a genuine winter climate, which is the natural basis for the seasonal winter recreation associated with the slopes of Čajuša and Stožer, but snow cover, season length and operating facilities vary from year to year and are never guaranteed. Kupres should be read as a working pastoral cultural landscape with a conditional winter-recreation layer, not as a managed resort with a fixed season.