skip to page content - The first printing house in Bosnia and
Herzegovina was founded in 1519 by Božidar Goraždanin, in the
city of Goražde, in eastern Bosnia. Two years later, in 1521,
the establishment closed and was moved to Romania. Subsequently,
a small number of books written in Bosnia and Herzegovina were
sent outside the country to be printed, in Venice, Vienna, Rome,
and elsewhere, but books were not produced in the country. In
the second half of the 19th century, there was a revival of
interest in printing and publishing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The first printing house started work in 1866, in Sarajevo, and
was called Sopronova pečatnja (Sopron’s Publishing House), after
its founder, Sopron Ignjat (1825–94), a journalist and printer-
publisher from Novi Sad. This later became Vilajetska štamparija
(Vilayet Printing House). Books were printed in the Latin,
Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic scripts. Following the occupation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1878, Vilajetska
štamparija conti