GOSPODSKA STREET

At 250 m long, this shopping street (Gospodska Ulica/Господска Улица) is one of the prides of Banja Luka. Rather elegant with its neo-Renaissance facades from the late 19th century, it is one of the few parts of the city center that escaped the destruction caused by the 1969 earthquake. It is a place where the locals go for a walk and where you can find mainly bank branches and ready-to-wear stores. Once called Pivnica ("brewery") Street, it has been officially named Ulica Veselina Masleše since 1945, in honor of the Bosnian Serb writer and partisan Veselin Masleša (1906-1943), who was born in Banja Luka and died in the great battle of Sutjeska in eastern Bosnia. But it is still known as Gospodska Street ("lord" or "gentleman"), a nickname given in 1878 by a merchant from Croatia when the Austro-Hungarians arrived. The new administration made this simple joke official by renaming the street Herren Gasse ("gentlemen's street" in German). In the middle of the street, notice the strange, spiked helmet-shaped roof that signals the former Balkan Hotel (today's Citadela Restaurant), which was a meeting place for Bosnian Serb intellectuals like Petar Kočić. The building is located on the corner of Kralja-Alfonsa-XIII Street, itself named after the Spanish king Alfonso XIII. The sovereign intervened in 1917 to have 16 Bosnian-Serb inhabitants of Banja Luka who had been sentenced to death for treason by the Austro-Hungarian imperial justice system pardoned.