Bihać

The Japodes, an Illyrian people, lived in the Una valley long before the town, building houses on stilts and leaving bronze, iron and silver jewellery at Bihać, Golubić, Ripač and Pritoka. Bihać itself first appears in a charter of the Hungarian king Béla IV of 26 February 1260, as a town on the river's island of Saint Ladislaus, and two years later Béla made it a royal free city answerable only to the crown, with its own elder, magistrates and notaries. Its Gothic church of Saint Anthony was built in 1266.

As the Ottomans advanced, Austria sent troops in 1530 to defend Bihać as one of the key strongholds of the Croatian frontier, ringed by a double wall with round and square towers. The town fell in 1592 after a ten-day siege, the church became the Fethija Mosque, and Bihać remained one of the most important forts in Bosnia until the 19th century. Marmont's French troops occupied it briefly in 1810, and Ottoman rule ended after the Congress of Berlin.

In the Second World War the town lay inside the Independent State of Croatia, and in 1941 thousands of Serbs, as well as Jews and Roma, were killed at Garavice nearby. From November 1942 to January 1943 Bihać was the centre of a liberated territory, the Bihać Republic, where Tito's movement held its first assembly. From 1992 to 1995 the town and its hinterland were besieged for three years. The University of Bihać opened in 1997, and Una National Park followed in 2008.

Bihać is the main town of the Bihać Krajina, the part of the Bosanska Krajina around the middle course of the Una, and its people are overwhelmingly Muslim. The town's monuments — the converted Gothic church, the Captain's Tower and a turbe honouring the defenders of 1878 — tell the story of a border fortress, the last town in Bosnia to fall to the Ottomans, in 1592.

Life follows the river. In summer the town swims from the islands and bathing places in the centre, and the Una Regatta is held each summer, together with cultural events. Rafting trips run on the river, anglers fish the Una and its neighbours for trout and grayling, and the national park has given the town a new role as an outdoor base.

Bihać has produced a long list of musicians, among them Alen Islamović, singer with Divlje Jagode and Bijelo Dugme, and Zele Lipovača of Divlje Jagode. Memory of the siege is strong, and visitors do well to listen rather than probe.

The city of Bihać, including its villages, had about 56,000 people at the 2013 census, and about 88 per cent of them are Muslim. It is the administrative centre of Una-Sana Canton, with the canton's government and a university, and much of the work is in public services, trade and river tourism. One of the larger breweries in the country is here, and farming is important on the fertile land around the town.

People live in the old centre and in the villages along the roads and riverbanks of the Bihać field, towards Ripač, Golubić and Pritoka.

Summer moves to the water, with bathing places on the river islands and long evenings in riverside cafés. Bihać is the largest city on the Una, and the river shapes the year: rafting is among the most popular outdoor pursuits in the country, and the Una is known for its brown trout and grayling.

Bihać eats as the rest of Bosnia does — ćevapi, grilled fingers of minced meat served in flatbread with chopped onion and kajmak, and burek and other pies — and the Una, rich in brown trout and grayling, runs past its riverside restaurants.

Krajina home cooking is plain and filling. Kljukuša, a traditional dish of the Bosanska Krajina, is grated potato mixed with flour and water and baked in an oven, and uštipci, fried dough balls, come with kajmak or jam. Other Bosnian staples include grah, a bean soup, stuffed peppers, ajvar, and pies such as zeljanica with spinach and sirnica with cheese.

Classic Bosnian dishes appear on restaurant menus here as elsewhere: sarma, cabbage or vine leaves stuffed with meat and rice, and begova čorba, a "bey's soup" of chicken and vegetables. Sweets are syrup-soaked — baklava, tufahije, which are walnut-stuffed poached apples, and hurmašice.

The town's brewery makes Preminger and Unski biser beer, and Bosnian coffee closes every meal.