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Pocitelj Artist's
Colony
by
ALOHA
DEAN
This unique settlement, listed as a
UNESCO heritage site,
(Google map) was heavily damaged during and sadly even after
the war but recent reconstruction has returned the town to its original
form
This once charming mediaeval town is situated in
the valley of the Neretva River, some twentyfive kilometers from
Mostar, on the route to the Adriatic Sea. The history of Pocitelj is not
well known and has to be researched. As far as we know, it existed in
1444 as a fortress supported by Hungary. Turks took it over in 1471 and
it became an important part of the Ottoman Empire. The town's principal
mosque is built by Hadzi Alija in 1563. From the beginning of the 18th
century Pocitelj was the seat of the captaincy and in 1782 it became the
seat of the kadiluk. A seventeenth-century enclosing wall marks
the height of the town's growth. At the time, there was in the town an
elementary school (mekteb), a secondary theological school (medresa)
and also public baths (hammam) and an inn for travelers (han).
The town was constructed right into a rocky mountainside overlooking a
bend in the Neretva River. This gives it the aspect of a natural
amphitheater, and is a delight for any architect with a feeling for
environmental settings. Its characteristic buildings are in Ottoman
style. The Stone houses along stone pathways are an unique, hidden
behind high walls surrounding peaceful, inner courtyards. It is
testimony of a culture that internal values grace over external
appearance.
The Turkish world traveler Evliya Celebi passed through Pocitelj in 1664
and wrote in his travel account (about the town's principal mosque):
"There is a tall cypress tree in its courtyard. This shining mosque was
erected by a forebear of our lord Ibrahim Aga. Alongside the town walls,
beside the water, his honored brother built a public kitchen (imaret)
which distributes free bread and soup to needy inhabitants day and
night. On Thursday evenings, it distributes spiced meat and savory and
sweet rice dishes. The houses of the town are built one above the other,
facing west towards the river. There is an abundance of walnut trees
here. Since the climate is mild, fruit grows better here than in other
towns." Evliya also mentions a clock tower WHICH bell "heavier and
clearer than any other in Bosnia and Herzegovina" was, according to
legend, brought from Crete. For many years the bell tolled the hours for
Pocitelj and in calm weather could be heard in Capljina and Gabela,
resounded from the stone into the far distance.
The clock-tower's bell still tolled until 1917, when the Austrians, who
had occupied Pocitelj since 1878, melted it down for bullets - just a
year before an armistice brought to an end both World War I and the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
With the Austrian conquest, Pocitelj lost its strategic importance and
declined. Only in the 1960s did it begin to grow again, as a tourist
center. In the Captain's House family mansion an art-ist's colony was
founded in 1964. More than 2.000 artists, not just in the fine arts but
also writers and poets, from the former Yugoslavia and around the world,
came to the colony between its founding and the beginning of the
1992-1995 war. Pocitelj, with its jumble of medieval stone buildings,
ancient tower overlooking the river and its proximity to the seaside,
gave artists a quiet and scenic place to work.
But the 1992-1995 war meant the destruction and looting of Pocitelj's
mix of Mediterranean and Turkish architecture and the magnificent
examples of the world's architectural treasury have been trashed.
There's no life in Pocitelj without the colony and it started work again
in 1999. Its reopening will revitalize this tiny medieval town. Nine
houses have been already rebuilt, along with the Hadzic-Alijana mosque
and the art colony building, in the first phase of a $93,750 project
sponsored by the Federation of BiH (FBiH) government. This year, the
official 8 June opening attracted several hundred artists and officials
to Pocitelj, where just 300 people lived before the war. And another
project has been budgeted for the next phase of work, including more
houses, infrastructure, and the Ottoman bath house. Pocitelj life can be
renewed and its glory reestablished.
