Bosnia and Herzegovina

The region held a medieval Bosnian kingdom before the Ottomans conquered it in 1463. Nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule brought Islam — many locals converted — along with the mosques, bazaars, bridges, and the mixed-faith character of towns like Sarajevo and Mostar. Austria-Hungary took over administration in 1878 and annexed the territory in 1908.

It was in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914, that Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark for the First World War. Between the world wars Bosnia was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, then a republic of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, often held up as its most ethnically mixed, and host of the 1984 Winter Olympics.

As Yugoslavia broke apart, Bosnia declared independence in 1992. Bosnian Serb forces, backed by Belgrade, besieged Sarajevo for nearly four years and carried out "ethnic cleansing," culminating in the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide, the massacre of around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. About 100,000 people died in the war. The 1995 Dayton Agreement ended it and created today's complicated state: two "entities," three constituent peoples, and an international overseer with residual powers.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a genuine meeting point of Islam and Christianity. Sarajevo's old town has mosques, an Orthodox and a Catholic cathedral, and a historic synagogue within a few hundred metres, and the city calls itself the "Jerusalem of Europe." The Ottoman inheritance lives on in the čaršija bazaar quarters, the hammams, and the melancholy sevdalinka love song.

Coffee is a slow ritual — Bosnian coffee served in a small copper džezva with a cube of sugar and a piece of Turkish delight — and social life runs through the coffee house and the grill. Hospitality is warm and direct, and there is a dark, self-deprecating humour born of hard history.

The war is inescapably present in cemeteries, shell-scarred pavements, and museums, but so is a lively contemporary scene: the Sarajevo Film Festival, begun under siege, is now the largest in the region.

The country's roughly 3.2 million people are split, in practice, along the lines drawn by the war. The Bosniak- and Croat-majority Federation and the Serb-majority Republika Srpska run largely parallel institutions, and the three communities often attend separate schools and follow separate media, even in shared cities.

Sarajevo, set in a steep river valley, is the political and cultural centre; Banja Luka is the main city of Republika Srpska; Mostar and Tuzla are the other hubs. Many families depend on remittances from relatives who left for Germany, Austria, or further afield, during the war or since.

Everyday life is calm and inexpensive, organised around family, the coffee house, football, and — in season — skiing on the former Olympic mountains and swimming in the rivers. Political dysfunction and emigration of the young are the running concerns.

The food is hearty, meat-heavy, and strongly Ottoman-influenced with Central European touches. Ćevapi, grilled fingers of minced meat served in a soft somun flatbread with raw onion and kajmak, are the national dish, with Sarajevo and Banja Luka each claiming the better version.

Burek — a filo pastry coiled around spiced minced meat — and its cousins filled with cheese, spinach, or potato are the everyday cheap meal, sold by weight. Sarma (stuffed cabbage or vine leaves) and begova čorba, a thick "bey's soup" of chicken and okra, are classics, and Herzegovina in the south adds grilled fish, cured ham, and the Žilavka and Blatina wines.

Sweets are syrup-soaked: baklava, tufahije (walnut-stuffed poached apples), and hurmašice. Rakija, usually plum brandy, is the toast, and Bosnian coffee ends any visit.

Sarajevo repays a couple of days: the Baščaršija bazaar with its coppersmiths and the Sebilj fountain, the line in the pavement where Ottoman architecture gives way to Austro-Hungarian, the Latin Bridge and the assassination corner, the rebuilt City Hall, the Tunnel of Hope museum under the airport that kept the besieged city supplied, and the graffiti-covered 1984 Olympic bobsled track on Mount Trebević.

Mostar's Stari Most, the single-arch Ottoman bridge destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004, is the country's emblem, with local divers leaping into the Neretva for tips; the Blagaj dervish house at the source of the Buna river and the walled village of Počitelj are close by. The wide Kravice Waterfalls, with a swimming pool below, are a short drive further.

Jajce has a waterfall in the middle of town and a medieval fortress; Travnik was a vizier's seat with a coloured mosque; and Višegrad has the UNESCO-listed bridge of Ivo Andrić's Nobel-winning novel. For wilderness, Sutjeska National Park holds Perućica, one of the last primeval forests in Europe, beneath the country's highest peak.