Banja Luka
— — a green river running through a green city.
Not only on a wall.
“A river city in the wide valley of the Vrbas, where the water runs clear and pale green out of limestone canyons to the south. Plane trees line the long pedestrian street, and a low Ottoman fortress holds the bend of the river at the centre. Above the rooftops two minarets and the cupolas of an Orthodox cathedral mark the same skyline. South of town the Vrbas tightens into rapids the rafters know, and farther up the gorge the water turns the colour of bottle glass. from the studio
Banja Luka, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Banja Luka sits on both banks of the Vrbas River in the northwestern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 160 kilometres west of Sarajevo and 150 kilometres south of Zagreb. It is the largest city of the Republika Srpska entity and the second-largest in the country, with a city population near 180,000. The valley floor lies at roughly 160 metres elevation, with the Dinaric Alps rising to the south toward the Vrbas Canyon. The river runs cold and clear out of limestone country and crosses the city before joining the Sava further north.
The Kastel Fortress, on the right bank of the Vrbas in the centre of the city, occupies a site continuously fortified since Roman times when the castrum of Castra stood here on the road between Salona and Servitium. The current walls are largely Ottoman, raised in the 16th century. Nearby the Ferhat Pasha Mosque, completed in 1579 under Ferhat-paša Sokolović and a UNESCO-recognised masterpiece of Ottoman architecture, was destroyed in 1993 during the Bosnian War and rebuilt with the original stone between 2001 and 2016. Across the river the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, in Serbian-Byzantine style, was rebuilt after the 1969 earthquake that damaged much of the city.
South of the city the Vrbas tightens into a canyon that runs roughly 25 kilometres toward Jajce. The river is a recognised whitewater run, and Banja Luka co-hosted the 2009 ICF Canoe World Championships on the Class III–IV section near Karanovac. Above the canyon the green water is fed by karst springs out of the limestone plateau, which give it the pale bottle-glass colour the city is known for. Krupa na Vrbasu, a small village 20 kilometres upstream, holds a series of low travertine falls and an Orthodox monastery founded in the 13th century.