Bosnia and Herzegovina Itinerary: The Perfect 7 Days

This is a seven-day loop for people who want to actually see Bosnia and Herzegovina - not just Mostar on a coach from the coast - and who are happy to drive. It starts and ends in Sarajevo, spends its middle in Herzegovina, and closes the circle through the wine town of Trebinje. You will need a car: the cities are linked by bus and one lovely train, but the sights that make this country special - Blagaj, Počitelj, Kravice, the Neretva canyon - sit off the public-transport map, and stringing them together any other way is a fight. Total driving is roughly 580 km spread over seven days, so no single day is a slog. Not sure seven days is your number? Our guide to how many days you need in Bosnia breaks down shorter and longer trips, and if you only have a long weekend, our 3 days in Bosnia route covers just Sarajevo, Mostar and a Herzegovina day.

The shape of it: two nights in Sarajevo, three in Mostar as a Herzegovina base, and one in Trebinje before the drive home. If you only have five days, cut Trebinje and drive Mostar straight back to Sarajevo; if you have more, the extra nights go in Mostar and Sarajevo, not on the road - or you point north for a day or two to the waterfall town of Jajce and central Bosnia, or out to Una National Park for rafting in the far northwest. Come in May, June or September and you get warm days, swimmable rivers, and none of the July-August furnace or crush - our guide to the best time to visit Bosnia breaks the seasons down month by month. In the cold season the same loop reshapes around the ski slopes above Sarajevo and a mild Herzegovina, as our guide to Bosnia in winter lays out.

Days 1-2: Sarajevo

Give the capital two nights, because it rewards a slow read more than almost any city its size. Sarajevo is laid out like a timeline you can walk: step off the Ottoman bazaar, cross a brass line in the pavement, and you’re on a Habsburg boulevard - with the scars of the 1990s siege still legible through all of it. Base yourself in or beside Baščaršija, the old bazaar, so the cafés, the coppersmiths and the riverfront are on your doorstep.

Day one is the old town on foot: the Sebilj fountain, the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque of 1531, the “Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures” line where east meets west, and the Latin Bridge, where the shot that started the First World War was fired on 28 June 1914. Day two goes deeper and higher - the Tunnel of Hope museum by the airport (20 KM, cash in marks) tells the siege honestly, and the cable car up Mount Trebević delivers the finest overview of the city, with the eerie abandoned 1984 Olympic bobsled track a short walk from the top station. Our full Sarajevo guide lays out how to pace it all.

Pick up your hire car on the morning of day three, not before - you don’t want a car sitting idle (and paid for) in a city you’re exploring on foot, and Sarajevo’s bazaar quarter is pedestrian and tight for parking anyway.

Day 3: Sarajevo to Mostar, the scenic way

This is one of the best drives in the Balkans, so don’t rush it. It’s about 130 km and 2 to 2.5 hours of actual driving down the M17 through the Neretva canyon, but you’ll want to stop, so give it the whole day. The first stretch out of Sarajevo is motorway (the A1 through the Ivan Tunnel to Bradina); after the toll you drop onto the two-lane M17 and follow the river south. It’s a good road, but you share it with trucks - settle in behind the slow ones and enjoy the gorge rather than fighting to pass. For the tolls, Cyrillic signs and winter-tyre rules across the whole loop, see our guide to driving in Bosnia.

Break the drive at Konjic, roughly halfway. Its restored Ottoman stone bridge over the Neretva is a five-minute stop and a lovely one, and Konjic is the unlikely home of ARK D-0, Tito’s secret nuclear bunker - a Cold War command complex dug 280 metres into the mountain, built in near-total secrecy between 1953 and 1979 to shelter the Yugoslav leadership from an atomic strike. You can only go in on a guided tour, and you must prebook (a day ahead at least, through the bunker’s own site); tours last around 60-90 minutes. If bunkers aren’t your thing, Konjic is also a launch point for white-water rafting on the Neretva. Either way it’s a natural lunch stop before the last hour down to Mostar.

Roll into Mostar in the late afternoon and you’ll have timed it perfectly, because the town is at its best once the day-trip buses leave. Check into a guesthouse in or just above the Old Town on the east bank, drop the car somewhere with parking on the flatter edges (the cobbled lanes near the bridge don’t take cars), and walk down to Stari Most as the light goes gold and the crowds thin.

Day 4: Mostar and Blagaj

Spend the morning on Mostar itself while it’s quiet. Everything orbits Stari Most, the single-arch Ottoman bridge rebuilt stone by stone after it was shelled to rubble in 1993 and reopened in 2004 - cross it slowly, the stone is worn glassy and steeper than photos suggest. In summer the local divers’ club works the parapet, leaping 24 metres into the Neretva for tips (a tradition since 1664; don’t try it yourself). Then lose an hour in Kujundžiluk, the coppersmiths’ bazaar, and climb the minaret of the Koski Mehmed-Paša Mosque for the postcard view straight down the river to the bridge. Our Mostar guide has the full rundown, including the honest bit about the town’s still-visible wartime divide.

In the afternoon, drive the 12 km southeast to Blagaj - about 15-25 minutes. The Blagaj Tekke is a white 16th-century dervish house built flush against a 200-metre cliff, right where the Buna river explodes out of a cave at the base of the rock - the largest karst spring in Europe by flow. Entry is around 10 KM, cash only, with a real dress code (shoulders and knees covered; free wraps at the door), because it’s still a working Sufi lodge. Most people photograph it and leave; you’ve got time, so climb to the ruined Stjepan-grad fortress above for the view over the valley, and - in summer - take the little boat into the spring cave. Our full Blagaj Tekke guide covers the boat, the fortress and the best light.

Back in Mostar for the evening, eat two or three streets back from the bridge (the riverside places charge a view premium), order ćevapi or grilled trout, and finish with a proper Bosnian coffee.

Day 5: The Herzegovina loop - Počitelj and Kravice

This is the day the car earns its keep. South of Mostar, two of the region’s headline sights sit an easy drive apart, and with your own wheels you can do both in one relaxed loop - the single best reason to be driving down here, because no useful bus links them.

Head south on the old M17/M6 line first to Počitelj, about 30 km and half an hour from Mostar. It’s a stepped Ottoman-medieval town stacked up a hillside above the Neretva - a fortress first raised by King Tvrtko I in 1383, an Ottoman mosque of 1563, a stone clock tower, all climbing the slope in pale limestone. It’s free, open all hours, and takes about 45-90 minutes to wander and climb; from the top of the citadel you look back over terracotta roofs to the river, largely to yourself outside the brief tour-bus windows. It’s on the UNESCO tentative list, and deservedly.

From Počitelj it’s another 30-40 minutes to the Kravice Waterfalls (about 40 km from Mostar all in). Kravice is a broad horseshoe of falls on the Trebižat river, roughly 25 metres high and 120 metres across, tumbling over a curved travertine ledge into a wide green pool - and from June to September it doubles as the best swimming hole in the country. Entry is 20 KM (about €10), cash, and parking is charged on top; the water tops out around a bracing 20°C and there are no lifeguards, but under a Herzegovina sun it’s glorious. There’s a boat across the pool, a couple of restaurants trading on the setting, and steps down into the basin. Go early or late to dodge the midday coach crush - our Kravice guide covers the fee, the swim season and the timing in full.

Drive back to Mostar for a third and final night. (If you’d rather not double back, Blagaj sits neatly on this loop too - but you saw it yesterday, so today is Počitelj and the waterfalls.)

Day 6: Mostar to Trebinje

Time to leave the Neretva and cross into the country’s other half. It’s about 110 km and two hours from Mostar to Trebinje, and the drive itself is part of the reward: take the road via Stolac, where you can pause at the Radimlja necropolis - a field of medieval stećci, the carved Bosnian tombstones - before the empty, dramatic karst road climbs on toward the border of Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There’s no passport check crossing between the entities - same country, same currency - but you’ll notice the signage switch to Cyrillic. The road is good; just note there are often police speed patrols around Stolac and Ljubinje, so keep to the limits.

Trebinje is the quiet surprise of this trip: a walled 18th-century Ottoman old town wrapped around a plane-tree square, sitting in the middle of Herzegovina’s wine country. Its landmark is the Arslanagić Bridge, a graceful Ottoman span of 1574 that was taken apart stone by numbered stone when the river was dammed in the 1960s, then rebuilt upstream. Up on the hill, the Hercegovačka Gračanica church looks centuries old but was finished in 2000, and the reason to climb up is the view over the whole valley. A few kilometres out, the Tvrdoš Monastery - built on a fourth-century Roman foundation - makes its own wine; a tasting of the native Vranac red or Žilavka white is the right way to end a day of driving. Spend the night here: after the day-trippers from Dubrovnik leave, the plane-tree square is one of the most relaxed evening spots in the country.

Day 7: Back to Sarajevo

The last day is the longest drive, so start reasonably early. Closing the loop from Trebinje back to Sarajevo is roughly 220 km and about 3.5-4 hours the sensible way - back up through the Neretva valley past Mostar. (There’s a shorter-looking eastern route through Bileća, Gacko and Nevesinje, but it’s slower going over mountain roads, and unless you specifically want that scenery, the western return is easier.) Break it wherever you fancy a coffee; you’ve earned an unhurried pace.

If your flight home is out of Sarajevo, aim to reach the airport with time to drop the car. If you’re flying from Dubrovnik instead - a common move, since it’s close to Trebinje - you’d flip the end of this loop: skip the drive back north, and finish on the Croatian coast instead. Our sister site’s Dubrovnik guide covers that end if you tack it on.

Renting a car and getting around

A hire car is the backbone of this itinerary - it turns a string of hard-to-reach sights into one flowing week, and every day from three onward depends on it. Book it in Sarajevo for pickup the morning you leave the city. A few things worth knowing:

• Cross-border paperwork. If there’s any chance you’ll dip into Croatia (a Dubrovnik finish, say), tell the rental company and get the Green Card insurance extension noted on your documents - some agencies restrict certain cars from leaving the country. Our Bosnia car rental guide covers booking, winter tyres, tolls and the cross-border rules in full.
• Money on the road. The currency is the convertible mark (BAM / KM), pegged at about 1.96 to the euro. The gates at Blagaj and Kravice, the divers’ bucket and small cafés all want cash in marks - euros are patchy. Draw KM from an ATM in the towns and you’ll never be stuck.
• The roads. Outside the short Sarajevo motorway, you’re mostly on two-lane roads shared with trucks - good surfaces, beautiful scenery, but plan on modest average speeds. Watch for police speed traps, especially in Republika Srpska.

Prefer not to drive at all? You can do a softer version with private transfers between the cities and local drivers for the day trips - pricier, less spontaneous, but hands-free. For when to come, see our trip-planning guides; the restaurant directory has our food picks in Sarajevo, Mostar and Trebinje; and the attractions hub has the rest of the country’s headline sights.

Got longer than a week? Add Sutjeska National Park and Maglić in the far southeast - the country’s highest mountain and its last primeval forest - as a wilder extension. Or give the trip ten days and swing north instead: our 10-day Bosnia road trip keeps this southern loop and adds Jajce and the rafting country of the Una in the northwest.

Seven days done this way - two cities, a canyon drive, a clutch of waterfalls and dervish houses, and a wine town to finish - is about the best introduction to Bosnia and Herzegovina there is. Keep the driving unhurried, keep marks in your pocket, and you will end the week wishing you had booked longer.