We commenced our “stecci search” across Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia with a fair degree of enthusiasm, having identified 8 out of the 28 locations which were on or close to our planned general route which was primarily designed to pick up other unvisited WHS.

Our first location was 1504-023 Velika and Mala Crijivika, situated just west of the village of Cista Provo some 11kms north of the main Croatian motorway. The main area of stecci straddles the road and is marked with a Croatian flag - a smaller one lies around 200 metres further west which might as well be seen. A notice board describes the site but, unfortunately it has been used for target practice by local hunters! There are around 90 tombstones which exhibit a nice variety of carving and the entire site is of interest for having remains (tumuli and cisterns) of human habitation going back to prehistoric times. If you only wanted to take in 1 stecak site, then in my view, this would do very well, being close to the coastal towns of Split etc.

Our next location was 1504-006 Dugi polje at Blidinje in Bosnia. If you are wanting to go inland from the Split area to Sarajevo then this can be nicely taken in for the cost of a few kms of small/rough roads from it to Jablanica. Blidinje is on Bosnia’s T List for its mixed values and is also a skiing area. The T List cultural aspects include 11 Stecci necropoli including this one already inscribed! This was the most scenically interesting of the stecci sites we visited – it lies a few kms east of Blidinje lakes and it overlooked by what were, in early June 2017 still snow-capped mountains. The 150 stecci were interesting also, with a range of carvings and a reasonably useful notice board describing the more significant ones. The location is NOT signposted anywhere around but the coordinates on our map are 100% correct. If you are going east from Lake Blidinje then bear left along a dirt road just after a very large hotel/restaurant called “Hadjucke Vrleti” (the only one in the area!) for a few hundred metres.

Our third location was 1504-028 at Perucac in Serbia. This can be combined quite neatly with a visit to the Tara NP and Drina Canyon but, in terms of its own “value”, we were very disappointed. The previous reviewer seemed to gain some benefit from his visit, for which I am pleased, but these 88 tombstones (only 1 of which is even minimally decorated) seemed to add nothing to what we had already seen. The notice board set at the entrance to the little park on the eastern outskirts of Perucac was the only one of the 3 we saw which referred to UNESCO - in this case that the site had been placed on the T List! I note that ICOMOS persuaded the nominating parties to remove 2 of the original nominated locations during the evaluation and even then, recommended deferral of the nomination in order to, inter alia, “Provide a clear and specific rationale for the inclusion of each of the component sites in the nominated series in terms of the proposed Outstanding Universal Value”. ICOMOS also “notes that this transnational serial nomination powerfully demonstrates that heritage can be a catalyser for peace, and acknowledges the importance of the efforts made by the four States Parties to work together to propose the inscription of their shared heritage of the stećci for inclusion in the World Heritage List". I suspect that the inclusion of a few locations from Serbia was more about supporting this aspect of the nomination than the OUV of the locations!

So, it was about at this point that we decided we had “done” Stecci! To put effort into picking off further locations would have been obsessive. We had got the idea, had seen some nice carvings and scenery, had read the information boards and AB evaluation (but not the enormous 1.273mb nomination file!) and didn’t intend doing any more research into “Balkan Mediaeval Funerary Practices”.