Travel Guide Višegrad

Višegrad/Вишеград (pronounced "vichégrad") has a population of about 5,500, 88% of which are Bosnian-Serbs. It is the capital of the municipality of Višegrad (population 10,000), in the Bosnian Serb Republic. The city is located 20 km west of Serbia (Vardište border crossing), 39 km northeast of Goražde and 133 km south of Srebrenica. Bus connections: see bus station.Višegrad is famous for its Mehmed-Pasha-Sokolović bridge. Listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2007, this work of art inspired Ivo Andrić to write The Bridge over the Drina (1945), a masterpiece of Yugoslav literature. Yes, but Višegrad is also the most complex city to visit in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here, local authorities seek to attract tourists by doing everything they can to conceal a horrific recent past, namely "one of the most comprehensive and ruthless ethnic cleansing campaigns of the Bosnian conflict," according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Once multicultural, the municipality of Višegrad was 63 per cent Bosniak and 32 per cent Bosnian Serb in 1991. From the following year, the Bosnian inhabitants were systematically expelled or massacred. Višegrad has now become the showcase of Serbian nationalism with its streets and monuments to war criminals and a strange tourist complex dedicated to Ivo Andrić. This one was created by the French-Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica on the very place of the 1992 killings.