Krajina Square (Trg Krajine)
Banja Luka's main square — home to the Boska department store and the Crooked Clock
If Banja Luka has a heart, it beats on Trg Krajine — the city's central meeting point, promenade and everyday stage right in the middle of town.
Trg Krajine (Krajina Square) is the main city square of Banja Luka. It sits in the very centre of town and takes its name from Bosanska Krajina, the region the city belongs to. Until the early 1990s it was named after Edvard Kardelj, and it took its present shape during the major rebuilding of the city core in the 1970s.
Today it is the space most of Banja Luka passes through, and a natural starting point for exploring Gospodska Street and the old town core.
The Boska department store
The square is dominated by the Boska department store, which opened in 1978. In Yugoslav times it was regarded as one of the best-known buildings of its kind in the country, and it remains the square's main structure and one of its symbols. A public underpass beneath the square leads into Boska's lower-level commercial floors.
In 2010 the building was thoroughly revitalised, with around 15 million euros invested in the works.
The Crooked Clock
On the square stands the Krivi sat (Crooked Clock), a memorial to the devastating earthquake that struck Banja Luka on 27 October 1969. Its hands are stopped at 9:11 — the moment the strongest earthquake in the city's history hit. According to photographs held in the Archives of Republika Srpska, the clock in fact stopped at 9:14, a few minutes after the quake.
Fifteen people were killed in the earthquake, most of them in a four-storey building known as the „Titanik“, which stretched from the Palas Hotel to the start of Gospodska Street and was the most heavily damaged building in the city; it was demolished in early 1970. The square as we know it grew out of the reconstruction that followed. Today the Crooked Clock is one of the city's favourite meeting spots, especially for young people.
Rebuilding the square
The square was significantly renovated in 2002, for the first time since its construction in the 1970s. The slippery marble slabs were replaced with granite, new lighting was installed and a fountain was built, while the previously straight post of the Crooked Clock was replaced with a curved one — which is how the monument got its name.