Tuzla

Tuzla is among the oldest continuously inhabited places in Europe. A rich Neolithic settlement stood here, and people have lived on the site continuously for more than 6,000 years. The Illyrian Breuci held the area before Rome, and the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII recorded a fort called Salines in 950. In the Middle Ages it was Soli, "salts", in the Bosnian kingdom; the Ottomans took the villages of Upper and Lower Soli around 1512 and ruled the area from Zvornik for nearly 400 years, giving the town its present name, from tuz, salt.

Austria-Hungary, arriving in 1878, built new salt works and factories in and around the town, and in 1920 the Husino uprising broke out. In the Second World War the town lay inside the Independent State of Croatia until the partisans freed it on 2 October 1943, one of the first liberated towns in Europe. After the war it grew into a major industrial and cultural centre, but salt extraction made parts of the centre sink, and few buildings older than the 20th century survive.

In 1990 Tuzla was the only municipality in the country where non-nationalist parties won, and through the war it was the only municipality not governed by SDA-led authorities. A withdrawing Yugoslav army column was ambushed in the city in May 1992, killing 54 soldiers, and on 25 May 1995 a shell fired from Serb positions on Ozren killed 71 people at the Kapija promenade. After Dayton the city hosted the headquarters of the US-led peacekeeping division. In February 2014 protests that began here spread across the country, and the canton government building was set on fire.

Tuzla is known as one of the most multicultural cities in the country, and is proud of having kept its pluralist character through the war. The 2013 census counted about 73 per cent of its people as Bosniaks and 14 per cent as Croats, with smaller Serb and Jewish communities, and the Franciscan monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, an Orthodox cathedral that was untouched through the war and a renovated Jewish cemetery sit alongside many mosques.

The novelist Meša Selimović came from Tuzla, and a book festival each July presents an award in his name for the best novel in the region's shared language. The city's National Theatre, founded in 1898, is the oldest in the country, and Teatar Kabare runs its own festival every March. Kalesija, east of the city, is one of the homes of Bosnian roots music, sung to two violins and a šargija.

The Workers' Sports Society Sloboda, founded in 1927, was the city's first sporting organisation. The women's basketball team Jedinstvo Aida won the European Champions Cup with Razija Mujanović, later inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. Tuzla also likes records: in 2007 some 6,980 couples kissed at once in the city.

About 111,000 people lived in the municipality at the 2013 census, making Tuzla the third-largest city in the country. It is the seat of Tuzla Canton and the economic, educational and health centre of the north-east, with the public University of Tuzla, founded in 1958, and several private colleges. Most people live on the hills of Ilinčica, Kicelj and Gradina above the central plain, in suburbs spreading along the Jala valley, and in villages such as Husino and Simin Han.

The economy still rests on industry. Six coal mines operate in the city area, and most of their coal feeds the Tuzla Thermal Power Plant, the largest power station in the country; the salt works, chemicals at nearby Lukavac and a growing service sector, helped by salt-lake tourism, provide much of the rest.

The day runs from early shifts at the mines and plants to evening walks through the pedestrian old town and summer afternoons at the lakes. The canton government building burned in the 2014 protests was still under reconstruction in 2026, and the University of Tuzla, with about 16,500 students, keeps the centre lively in term time.

The north-east eats like the Pannonian plain as well as like Bosnia. Grills turn out ćevapi and pljeskavica — the city's ćevapi are made differently from Sarajevo's — and bakeries sell burek and its cousins sirnica, with cheese, and zeljanica, with spinach. Restaurants serve sogan-dolma, onions stuffed with minced meat, and the classics found across Bosnia, from sarma to begova čorba, a "bey's soup" of chicken and vegetables.

Kajmak, a creamy dairy product similar to clotted cream, goes with the grilled meat and the flatbread, and stuffed peppers, grah, a bean soup, and ajvar are staples of Bosnian tables here as elsewhere. Sweets inspired by the Middle East, such as baklava and tufahija, a whole stewed apple stuffed with walnuts, finish the meal.

Salt, drawn from the deposits beneath the city since at least the Middle Ages, is a small point of local pride, and coffee is taken Bosnian-style everywhere, slowly, on the terraces of the old town.