Pale (town)

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Пале
Pale
Coat of arms
Image:Grb-pala.gif
Location in Republika Srpska

Shown in bright red (click to enlarge)
The light red indicates the Republika Srpska entity
General Information
Entity Republika Srpska
Municipality area 492 km²
Population
- (est.)

6,900
- (1991 census) 16,310
Coordinates 43°82′N 18°57′E
Area code +387 57
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
CEST (UTC+2)
Website www.pale.rs.ba
Politics
Mayor Slobodan Savić (SDS) [1]

Pale (Cyrillic: Пале) is a town and a municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, located northeast of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo. The municipality of Pale is one of the municipalities of the City of Istočno Sarajevo.

Coordinates: 43°48.871′N 018°34.362′E

Contents

[edit] History

Pale was known as the de facto capital of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war, as the Constitution of Republika Srpska sets out that Sarajevo is the capital of Republika Srpska. The de facto capital has now transferred to Banja Luka.

Prior to the Dayton Peace Accord, Pale was a remote suburb of Sarajevo; following the population redistribution on the basis of ethnicity in Bosnia during and after the Bosnian War, it began to more closely resemble a proper town, which it does, today.

[edit] Population

In the census of 1991, the Municipality of Pale had 16,310 residents, including:

The town of Pale itself had a population of 6,797, including:

  • 4,915 Serbs
  • 1,438 Muslims by nationality (Bosniaks)
  • 271 Yugoslavs
  • 88 Croats
  • 85 others

The pre-war Bosniak part of the Pale municipality known as Pale-Prača is now in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Bosnian Podrinje Canton).

Today there are about 30,000 inhabitants in Pale, many of them Bosnian Serbs that moved from Sarajevo.

[edit] Name and geography

Pale is additionally referred to by its Serb inhabitants, and in fact by many of the inhabitants of the Republika Srpska (Serb Republic), as 'Srpsko Sarajevo', or 'Serb Sarajevo'. However, there is a fair amount of distance between the borders of the actual city of Sarajevo and Pale itself (albeit less than 10 km). Pale continues to be referred to as Serb Sarajevo due to the fact that, after the Dayton Peace Accords, Sarajevo-proper was designated as belonging to the Muslim-Croat Federation, but Bosnian Serbs, having lived in Sarajevo for generations themselves, wanted to retain some claim to their city. As a result, in an attempt to echo belonging to Sarajevo, and stake some claim to it, Pale, the closest Serb settlement to Sarajevo (within the Serb Republic), became known as and referred to as Serb Sarajevo, albeit with a hint of sarcasm by many people, without regard to their ethnicity. The town is, in reality, removed geographically from the city of Sarajevo and shares no metropolitan features with the city itself. It is home to its own post office, University buildings, etc.


[edit] External links


 
Political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zastava Bosne i Hercegovine