Heritage by Country / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Stolac - the historic town
Info Sections
About the site
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Stolac
Type: Historic Town
Epoch: Middle Ages, Antiquity
Theme:
World Heritage:
Stolac is located in the area known as Herzegovina Humina, on the tourist route crossing Herzegovina linking the mountainous hinterland in Bosnia with the coastal regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dubrovnik and Montenegro.
Thanks to its favourable natural conditions Stolac and its environs have been settled since ancient times – a period of some 16,000 years (from the Palaeolithic to the present day), with even the urban history of Stolac going back 2,500 years. Its rich hunting-grounds and other natural benefits attracted prehistoric man, and later the Illyrians, Romans and Slavs, all of whom left behind them a wealth of evidence of their material culture.
Given its geographical location, historical complexity, significance as part of the system of settlements, unique valuable natural and architectural resources, and its urban morphological and formal features, Stolac is indisputably an area of outstanding importance for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the whole region. No less important, the Stolac area includes monuments that are unique or extremely rare examples of certain chronological, stylistic or typological groups, from the Palaeolithic period, through the Hellenistic and Roman period, the medieval Bosnian state and the Late Medieval periods; with monuments of all three major world monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity (both Catholicism and Orthodoxy), and Islam.
One of the things that one has to see in Stolac is the Tomb of Mosa Danon. This monument is exceptionally significant for the spiritual and material culture of the Jewish people in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider region. It can only be likened to pilgrimage sites of other religious groups.
The tombstone marks the grave of Mosa Danon, Rabbi of Sarajevo and a highly regarded member of the Jewish community in the early nineteenth century, who was appointed as hamambasi in 1815. Fifteen years later, at a time when the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina was in very difficult circumstances, he set off on foot for Palestine, desiring to die and be buried in the Holy Land. He died on the way, close to Stolac, on the spot where he is buried. His fellow countrymen erected the monument in his memory ten years after his death.
Expert network