In June, during my trip through the Balkan, I was wandering around Belgrade, Serbia searching for an interesting souvenir. I happened to stumble across a book on the Stecci, published in 1982 and written in Serbo-Croatian (Title: Umetnost na tlu Jugoslavije; Stecci). As a WH traveller I of course immediately recognised the topic as being one of the (relatively close) WHS. Such an interesting find and I bought it without thinking twice; this was the souvenir I had been looking for. 

Early August 2023, I visited Mostar (a WHS) in Bosnia & Herzegovina. A review of my visit to Mostar is forthcoming. Of couse, I had added a visit to one of the Stecci sites to my (/our) itinerary. Basing my choice on the reviews on this website and some basic research on the internet, I decided that I should visit the Radimlja Necropolis, as this is by far the biggest and best preserved Stecci necropolis. Furthermore, it is relatively close to Mostar, which is on the usual itinerary of both regular and WH travellers to Bosnia & Herzegovina. 

I had done some research on how to visit Radimlja from Mostar by public transport, but this seemed nearly impossible (unless you take a bus to Stolac, a tentative WHS, and then take a taxi). I decided to just go to Mostar and see if I could arrange a tour with some company. Luckily, the host of our apartment in Mostar generously offered to take us to whatever place in the Herzegovina region we wanted, of course asking some fee in return. Nonetheless, I decided that this was the perfect way to visit remote Radimlja. 

Our host drove us in his personal car to both Radimlja (about 45 minutes to 1 hour) and Stolac (another 5/10 minutes). The tour cost us 30 euros for 2 persons.

At the Radimlja site, I was surprised to see some sort of visitor center, which I suppose was a new building as I don’t remember reading about a visitor center. Well, not really a visitor center, but more like a building in which you had to pay for your entrance ticket (which is a pretty nice souvenir), you could buy some basic souvenirs (of course I brought home a fridge magnet in the shape of a Stecak, singular of Stecci), and where you could/had to watch a 3 minute video made by the City of Stolac showing some of the city’s and region’s tourist sites (nothing much to be honest). 

The entrance ticket costs 6 Bosnian marks (KM) or 3 euros. It is possible to pay with euros as well as marks, same as in most shops/restaurants in Mostar. We were not the only visitors that moment, as there were maybe 5 other tourists. 

The site is interesting and comparing the Stecci at Radimlja with other Stecci I saw pictures of on the internet and in my recently bought book, Radimlja is probably the most interesting site of this WHS. I missed interpretation boards and additional information. One could just freely walk around and look at the Stecci, but if you did not do your homework before the visit, I can imagine the visit would be a bit underwhelming. Personally, I’m very interested in Eastern European history and as such I found this visit interesting nonetheless. To a regular tourist, however, it would feel like a field with a couple of white old-looking stones next to a highway, for which you would have to pay 3 euros to enter.