Jajce (German: Jaitze) is a town and municipality in the canton
of Central Bosnia. It is located about 70 km south of
Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jajce was the seat of the kings of Bosnia before the conquest by the
Ottoman Empire.
Jajce is located in the center of Bosnia and
Herzegovina on the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The old town is located on a castle hill, which is
bounded in the south by the Pliva and in the east by the Vrbas. To
the southwest of the old town, the Pliva flows over a 20 m high
waterfall into the Vrbas Gorge. The mostly forested mountains in the
area rise up to 1400 m.
The municipality of Jajce is bounded
in the north, northeast and west by the Republika Srpska. The
neighboring municipalities within the federation are Dobretići in
the east, Travnik in the southeast and Donji Vakuf in the south.
To the northwest of Jajce are Mrkonjić Grad, Ključ and
Bihać.
Relics from the Bronze and Iron Ages have been found in the urban
area. A first permanent settlement in the area emerges from the
oldest existing monument, a temple of the god Mithras from the 4th
century AD.
Jajce was founded in 1396 by Hrvoje Vukčić
Hrvatinić, Duke of Bosnia. The Duke, who came from Split, had a
fortress built at the confluence of the Pliva and Vrbas rivers and
named it Jajce. In the 15th century a town developed below the
fortress. The Bosnian King Tvrtko II (1421–1444) made Jajce his
royal seat. It gained not only political but also economic
importance as the center of the Bosnian state and can be regarded as
the “first capital of Bosnia”. This heyday ended in 1463, however.
Stjepan Tomašević was crowned as the last Bosnian king by papal
legate Nikola von Modruš, a Dalmatian humanist, in Jajce in November
1461, before he was captured and executed by the Ottomans in 1463.
In the same year they took the city for the first time, but were
repulsed by the Hungarians. Their king Matthias Corvinus established
the "Banat Jajce" in 1464.
Ivaniš Berislavić, a nobleman of a
Croatian lineage, was Banus of Jajce from 1504 to 1514. His task was
to protect the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary, Croatia, from
Ottoman attacks. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the city came
under the Ottoman Empire.
From July 29, 1878,
Austrian-Hungarian troops occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in
accordance with the resolutions of the Berlin Congress. Jajce itself
was occupied on August 7th. Previously, there had been fighting in
the area around the city.
During the Second World War, Jajce
was the scene of important political events due to its location in
an unoccupied area. In the building of the former Sokol gymnastics
club, the 2nd assembly of the Anti-Fascist People's Liberation
Council (AVNOJ) met from November 21 to 29, 1943, at which
historical resolutions were passed and the federalist concept for
socialist Yugoslavia was developed (AVNOJ resolutions). Therefore
Jajce is considered to be the founding place of the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Before the Bosnian War, about
45,000 people lived in Jajce; today the community has around 30,000
inhabitants, mostly Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks. Tensions recurred
on the return of residents displaced during the war, and one person
was killed in 1997. During the war, the western districts of the
municipality of Jajce split off and form the municipality of Jezero
in the Republika Srpska today.