Bosnia and Herzegovina

The city where WWI started (Latin Bridge, 1914) and where the longest siege of a modern capital ended (1,425 days, 1992–1995). Ottoman Baščaršija bazaar, the Gazi Husrev-bey Mosque, the War Tunnel Museum, and the haunting War Childhood Museum sit in a valley where Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish monuments stand within 400 metres of each other — "Jerusalem of Europe." The 1984 Winter Olympics ski slopes are 45 minutes away.

A small Herzegovinan town built around the single most photographed bridge in the Balkans — the 16th-century Ottoman Stari Most arching 24m above the emerald Neretva River. The original bridge stood 427 years before being deliberately destroyed in November 1993; the 2004 reconstruction (using stones from the same Tenelija quarry) is now UNESCO-listed. The Old Town's slippery Ottoman cobbles, Kujundžiluk bazaar with its hand-hammered copper workshops, and the Koski Mehmed-Pasha minaret view make for a 24-hour visit that punches well above its weight. Stay overnight: day-trippers from Dubrovnik clear out by 17:00 and the city becomes itself again.