Vrelo Bune (Buna Spring), Blagaj — karst spring
Julian Nyča · CC BY-SA 3.0

Vrelo Bune (Buna Spring), Blagaj

Vrelo Bune

  • Elevation56 m
  • 2 min read
  • 43.257° N 17.904° E

Interesting facts

  • Hydrologists class Vrelo Bune as an ascending siphon spring: water is driven upward under pressure from deep karst channels before pouring out of the cave.
  • The dervish lodge's guest house predates 1664 and was rebuilt in 1851, while the tekke complex itself probably goes back to about 1520 at the latest.
  • The Velagić family complex on the Buna, built before 1776, has a wing on arches over the river that housed seven mills for washing wool and fulling cloth.
  • Four historic bridges once crossed the short Buna; the five-arched Karađoz-beg bridge in Blagaj, built before 1570, has spans that widen toward the centre.
  • Right beside the spring, diverted channels once powered water mills, including a stamping mill and two fulling mills on opposite banks.
  • Cave divers have explored the flooded passages behind the spring in expeditions in 1973, 1984, 1999 and 2003.
  • The natural and architectural ensemble of Blagaj, with the spring at its heart, has been on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List since 2007.

Why it is worth it

At Blagaj, a few kilometres south-east of Mostar, a sheer limestone wall about 200 metres high rises straight out of the valley floor, and at its foot a whole river is born. The Buna does not trickle from the rock: it pours out of a dark cave mouth at the base of the cliff already full-grown, clear, blue-green and cold — its water stays at about 10–11 °C the year round — and boats can be rowed right up to the mouth of the cave. Few places show so plainly how much water moves unseen through karst country.

Vrelo Bune is counted among the most powerful springs in Europe. Its flow never falls below about 3 cubic metres per second, averages close to 24, and in wet seasons can reach 120; in January 1971 a peak of around 380 cubic metres per second was recorded, putting it among the handful of springs in the world with the greatest maximum discharge. The water gathers from an area of some 1,100 square kilometres of the Herzegovinian uplands, including the Nevesinje field and the slopes of Mount Velež, sinks into the limestone and resurfaces here where the rock meets a band of younger, impermeable flysch. Divers began exploring the flooded passages behind the cave in 1973, and later expeditions followed them for some 520 metres, to a point 72 metres below the spring's surface.

What makes the spring unforgettable is what people built beside it. In the sixteenth century, under Ottoman rule, a dervish lodge — the Blagaj tekke — was set right against the cliff at the water's edge, its pale walls standing over the newly emerged river. It remains one of the most treasured historic buildings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the pairing of pale house, dark cave and vertical rock is one of the great images of the Balkans. The river then runs about 9 km to join the Neretva, and it is a key habitat of the softmouth trout, an endemic fish of this corner of the Balkans. The spring and its surroundings are protected as a natural monument and appear on the list of geological heritage sites selected by the International Union of Geological Sciences.

Getting there

The spring is at the edge of the village of Blagaj, about 12 km from the centre of Mostar. Mostar International Airport (OMO) is about 5 km away. From the village a lane follows the river upstream to the tekke and the cave.

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Bosnia and Herzegovina 11The Most Beautiful Karst Springs 8The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Vrelo Bune is a natural and architectural ensemble located at the spring of the Buna River near Blagaj, a village-town, and is part of the wider "Townscape ensemble of the town of Blagaj — Historical and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina", situated southeast of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The primary rationale behind the decision of the KONS to designate the site as protected and thus include it in the protected area of Blagaj as a historic urban area, lies in the harmonious coexistence of natural and architectural, cultural, and historical elements, as evidenced by the "distinctive quality of the coexistence of the natural and the man-made" and the "integration of the physical structure into the landscape".

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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