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Other entries in Neum

Bosnia's corridor to the sea

Taking the bus from Dubrovnik we made our way up the picturesque coastline of Southern Dalmatia, eventually arriving at a checkpoint that marked the border between Croatia & Bosnia-Hercegovina. Neum is BIH's only seaside town and is a bit of a geographical oddity, a 16km strip of Bosnian territory with no (that I knew of) road connections to Sarajevo or Mostar. The town is having a bit of a building boom as people are building hotels to take the overflow from Dubrovnik and take in the cheaper end of the market. Bosnia is significantly cheaper than Croatia. The town is also something of a duty free shop as alcohol is cheaper here and it is on the main highway to Dubrovnik. I was intrigued as to why this 16km strip exists. I have discovered that the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) was very worried that the Venetians would invade their small city based republic. They had a direct frontier with them. However Ragusa had excellent diplomatic relations with its vastly more powerful southern neighbour, The Ottoman Empire. In a very clever deal Ragusa gave away a 16km strip of land immediately south of its border with Venice and ceded it to the Ottomans. Then they could guard it with their vastly superior army and resources keeping Ragusa safe from Venetian invasion. When Yugoslavia split up in the early to mid 90's the Dayton Agreement (1996) gave this corridor to the new nation of Bosnia & Herzegovina.