Sutjeska National Park

Listen first. Beneath the road, the Sutjeska River runs fast and cold over pale stones. The air smells of wet bark, crushed leaves and woodsmoke from somewhere far down the valley. Steep walls of forest rise on every side, so the sky becomes a narrow ribbon of light above you. This is Sutjeska National Park, a short drive south of the town of Foča, in the far southeast of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sutjeska is the oldest national park in the country. It was declared in 1962, and it covers a wide sweep of mountains, canyons, meadows and forest along the border with Montenegro. The river gives the park its name. Over a very long time, it has cut a deep gorge through limestone. The main road follows that gorge, and many visitors first meet the park through a car window, between grey cliffs and dark green slopes.

The heart of the park, for many people, is a forest called Perućica. It is one of the last primeval forests in Europe. That means it is old-growth woodland that has never been cleared or planted by people. Beech, fir and spruce grow here as they have for thousands of years. Some trees rise to remarkable heights. Others lie where they fell, slowly turning back into soil, moss and mushrooms. Nobody tidies this forest... and that is the whole point.

Here is something many visitors miss. In a managed forest, dead wood is usually removed. In Perućica, fallen trunks stay on the ground for decades. They feed beetles, fungi and birds, and they hold water like a sponge. So when you walk near the forest edge, look down as much as up. The ground is soft and uneven. It is a layered floor of rotting logs, needles and leaves — a living archive of the woodland itself.

Inside Perućica, the forest hides a waterfall called Skakavac. The water drops roughly seventy-five metres down a cliff face into the trees below. There is a viewpoint above the falls, and on a still day you hear the water before you see it. In spring, when the snow melts on the high ground, the fall is at its fullest. By late summer it can thin to a white thread against the dark rock.

Above the forest stands Maglić, the highest mountain in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at 2,386 metres. Its summit sits right on the border with Montenegro. The name comes from the local word for mist, and the peak often wears a cap of cloud even on a clear morning. Experienced hikers climb it in summer. The route is steep and exposed, and the weather can turn quickly, so this is a mountain for planning, not improvising.

To the north and east, the park reaches across the high plateau of Zelengora, the green mountain. Up here, the forest opens into wide meadows. Small glacial lakes sit in hollows left by ice long ago. Shepherds have brought flocks to these summer pastures for generations. The landscape feels very different from the dark gorge below — open, windy and full of light, with wildflowers in early summer.

Now turn from the forest to the valley floor at Tjentište. This open meadow beside the river holds a heavy chapter of twentieth-century history. In 1943, during the Second World War, the Yugoslav Partisans — the resistance army led by Josip Broz Tito — were surrounded here by German and Italian forces and their allies. The Axis operation aimed to destroy the Partisan army completely. What followed became known as the Battle of the Sutjeska.

The fighting was desperate. The Partisans were outnumbered, short of food, and carrying thousands of wounded and sick people with them. In the end, part of the army broke out of the encirclement, but at a terrible cost. Many thousands died in these mountains. Tito himself was wounded during the battle. In the decades after the war, Sutjeska became one of the central stories of Yugoslav memory, taught in schools across the country.

That memory is shaped in concrete at the Tjentište memorial complex, often called the Valley of Heroes. The great monument was designed by the sculptor Miodrag Živković and unveiled in 1971. Two huge, fractured forms rise from the slope like split rock, or like the two sides of a broken pass. You can walk between them. Up close, the concrete surfaces are rough and faceted, and they catch the light very differently in morning and in evening.

In 1973, the battle also came to the cinema. A major Yugoslav film called Sutjeska was made about these events, and the Welsh actor Richard Burton played Tito. It is a small surprise for many visitors — a Hollywood star in a Partisan epic, filmed in these Bosnian mountains. For a time, Tjentište was also a place for youth camps and gatherings, when young people from across Yugoslavia came here to remember the battle.

Today the meadow is quieter. You may see school groups, hikers resting before the climb, or families having a picnic by the river. Wildlife lives in the wider park too — brown bears, wolves and chamois, a nimble mountain goat-antelope, live in the remote high ground, though you are unlikely to meet them near the road. Most of what you will notice is smaller: birdsong, the hum of insects, and the constant voice of the river.

Before you move on, stand still for a moment. Look at the monument, then at the forested slopes behind it, then at the grey peaks above. One view holds a war, a forest older than any written record, and the highest summit in the country. As you walk back toward the river, listen to the water over the stones. It was running here long before the battle... and it will keep running long after today.