A city of southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The chief Turkish administrative and commercial center of Herzegovina from the 1500s, it passed to Austria in 1878 and to Yugoslavia after World War I. In 1993 ethnic Croats proclaimed the city the capital of the breakaway Croat republic Herceg-Bosna, and many structures, including a historic 16th-century bridge, were destroyed as a result of fighting between Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.