The Republika Srpska Capital — the Vrbas River for whitewater rafting, the Ottoman Kastel fortress, café culture on Gospodska Street, and roast lamb and burek in the most Balkan city you've never been to
Banja Luka is the largest city in Republika Srpska (the Serb entity of Bosnia & Herzegovina) and the second-largest city in Bosnia, set on the Vrbas River in a wide valley ringed by Dinaric highlands. It has a more relaxed, lived-in feel than Sarajevo — a university city with a thriving café culture on Gospodska Street, one of the most pleasant pedestrian streets in the Balkans. The Vrbas canyon, just upstream from the city, offers some of the best whitewater rafting in the region. The Kastel fortress, an Ottoman reconstruction over a Roman fort, overlooks the Vrbas bend. Banja Luka's food cu…
Banja Luka was a significant settlement in the medieval Bosnian kingdom, but its modern form was shaped by the Ottoman Empire, which took the city in 1528 and made it a major administrative and commercial centre. The Kastel fortress was reconstructed in Ottoman style over the existing Roman defences. In the late 16th century, Banja Luka was briefly the Ottoman capital of the Bosnia Eyalet. The Austro-Hungarian Empire took control in 1878, introducing Mitteleuropean urban planning, the railway, and the grid-street layout of the modern city centre. The earthquakes of 1969 destroyed much of the…