Jajce

Jajce rises above the meeting of the Pliva and Vrbas rivers, where a waterfall pours beneath the walls of the old town. The powerful nobleman Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić founded the town around an earlier fortress, and its name appears in writing in 1396. Jajce became a royal capital of Bosnia and the last residence of King Stjepan Tomašević, whose crown came from Pope Pius II.

In 1463 the Ottomans captured Jajce and executed the king. Their possession was brief: Matthias Corvinus of Hungary retook the fortress later that year and made it the centre of a frontier banate. The Ottomans besieged it again in 1501, but Ivaniš Korvin and allied nobles drove them back. Jajce finally fell in 1527; as the Ottoman frontier moved north, the old royal stronghold lost much of its military importance.