Kotor
In Kotor cats have a small museum all their own, housed in an old-town palazzo, filled with engravings, vintage postcards and phot...
Updated 8 July 2026
Kotor
This season · July · Summer
What to do in Kotor now
The story
The story of Kotor
A history of dominations, from Illyrian origins to Venice
The settlement at the head of the bay has roots going back to the Illyrian and Roman era, when the town was known as Acruvium and was already a harbour sheltered by the mountains. In the Middle Ages the city came under Byzantine influence, then that of the Serbian kingdom of the Nemanjić, who made it into a port and a trading centre of note, with its own mint and a cathedral already consecrated in the 12th century. The turning point came in 1420, when Kotor voluntarily submitted to the Republic of Venice to escape Ottoman pressure: nearly four centuries of Venetian rule began, during which the city became a fortified front-line outpost, simply called Cattaro by the Venetians.
The fall of the Serenissima in 1797 opened a turbulent period: Austrian rule, a brief French interlude during the Napoleonic wars, the return of Austria as part of the Habsburg Empire until 1918, then entry into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Second World War brought Italian occupation of the Bay of Kotor, followed by Tito's socialist Yugoslavia. In 1979 a violent earthquake struck the old town hard, damaging palaces and churches; the reconstruction, carried out according to philological criteria under UNESCO supervision, is the reason one can walk today through an intact old town. Since 2006 Kotor has belonged to independent Montenegro.
The walled old town, a labyrinth of Venetian stone
Once through one of the sixteenth-century gates, car traffic vanishes and only stone remains: narrow alleys, irregular little squares, palaces with loggias and noble coats of arms carved above the doorways. The urban fabric does not follow a regular grid but thickened over the centuries around churches, wells and courtyards, in a tangle that invites getting lost rather than following a fixed route. The hub is Trg od Oružja, the Square of Arms, overlooked by the Prince's Palace, the sixteenth-century clock tower and the former seat of the Venetian governors; from here streets branch off towards the other, smaller squares, each historically dedicated to a guild or a church, from blacksmiths to bakers.
Several Romanesque and Baroque churches survive in the maze, along with convents, the town theatre housed in an old palazzo, and the maritime museum, which tells the long tradition of local captains and shipowners united since the Middle Ages in a seafarers' brotherhood. Walking here in the evening, once the cruise-ship groups have returned on board, gives a truer sense of the city's real scale: small, quiet, still permanently inhabited, with laundry strung between windows and craft workshops next to bars.
The cathedral of Saint Tryphon, the city's religious heart
The cathedral dedicated to Saint Tryphon, the city's patron, was consecrated in 1166 on the site of an earlier church that had already housed the saint's relics since the 9th century, brought to Kotor, according to tradition, by a merchant who bought them in Constantinople. The Romanesque building, with its facade of two asymmetrical towers resulting from later rebuilding after earthquakes, is the most important religious monument of the Bay of Kotor and for centuries was a Catholic bishop's seat in a territory with an Orthodox majority, a testament to the coexistence of different rites along this coast.
Inside, the Gothic ciborium above the high altar, the surviving Romanesque capitals and above all the cathedral treasury, with silver and gold reliquaries crafted by local goldsmiths between the 14th and 15th centuries, reveal the wealth accumulated by a mercantile port city. The 1979 earthquake severely damaged the bell towers, rebuilt in the following years; climbing one of them today offers one of the most direct views over the roofs of the old town and the first stretch of the walls.
The walls climbing the mountain, up to the fortress of San Giovanni
Kotor's fortifications run for about four and a half kilometres, built and reinforced in successive phases between the 9th and 19th centuries, and are the only example in the Adriatic of a city wall that climbs an almost vertical slope instead of simply enclosing a settlement on flat ground. From the old town the walkways climb up the steep flank of Mount San Giovanni, passing by the small church of Our Lady of Health, built as a votive offering against a plague epidemic, until reaching the remains of the Sveti Ivan fortress at over 260 metres above sea level, after roughly 1,350 uneven steps carved into the rock.
The climb, tiring and largely without shade, is best tackled in the cool hours of the morning, with plenty of water: the reward is a view that opens up gradually over the whole bay, over the stone roofs of the old town and the mountains enclosing it. The walls are lit up at night with a scenic effect visible from across the whole bay, and together with the old town they form the heart of the UNESCO recognition granted in 1979.
Perast, the town of sea captains and baroque palaces
About ten kilometres from Kotor, along the shore of the bay, Perast is a compact village that in the eighteenth century boasted sixteen noble palaces and supplied long-haul captains to half of Europe: it is said that a nautical school of reference for the entire eastern Adriatic was based here, attended even by Russian officers sent by Peter the Great. The settlement, free of cars in its historic core, stretches along a single long strip between the sea and the mountain, dominated by the unfinished bell tower of the church of St Nicholas, the highest vantage point over the bay after Kotor's walls.
The baroque palaces, some still inhabited by descendant families, others turned into small museums or accommodations, tell of a wealth built on maritime trade and then slowly faded with the decline of sailing navigation. Perast is today the starting point for reaching by boat the two islets facing it, and in any case deserves a stop of its own for its waterfront, the cafés overlooking the water and the quiet that sets it apart from the busier Kotor.
The twin islands: Sveti Đorđe and Our Lady of the Rocks
Facing Perast, two small islands emerge that sum up the bay's twin religious souls. Sveti Đorđe is natural, covered in cypresses, home to a Benedictine monastery and an old cemetery that earned it the nickname island of the dead: it cannot be visited inside, but its dark silhouette, photographed on every postcard of the bay, is an integral part of the landscape. Gospa od Škrpjela, Our Lady of the Rocks, is instead entirely artificial: tradition has it that in 1452 some sailors found an icon of the Virgin on a jutting rock there, and that ever since, as a votive offering, generations of seafarers have thrown stones and even the hulls of old boats to enlarge the islet to its present size.
On the artificial island stands a baroque church rebuilt in the seventeenth century, whose interior holds more than sixty votive paintings donated by captains in gratitude for shipwrecks survived, as well as a panel embroidered in gold and silver, the work of a local woman who worked on it for a quarter of a century while waiting for her sailor husband's return. The tradition of the ranci, the festival in which the people of Perast return every year to throw stones into the sea around the islet, keeps this legendary origin alive still today.
Dobrota, the long village of sea captains
Just north of Kotor, blending almost seamlessly with the city's outskirts, Dobrota stretches for several kilometres along the shore of the bay in an unbroken succession of villas, gardens and small private harbours. For centuries, proportionally to its population, it was one of the wealthiest places in the bay, thanks to a local merchant fleet that by the late eighteenth century numbered dozens of sailing ships engaged in trade with the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean. The neoclassical and late-baroque facades of its tower-houses, often equipped with private chapels, still tell today of that season of maritime prosperity.
Unlike the walled compactness of Kotor, Dobrota is best visited at a leisurely pace, perhaps by bicycle or on foot along the waterfront, among small boatyards still in operation and informal bathing spots set up on the rocks. It is the ideal base for those seeking a quieter stay while still remaining just minutes from the old town.
Prčanj, quiet and monumental churches on the other shore
Continuing beyond Dobrota one reaches Prčanj, a village equally tied to sailing seafaring and equally quiet, dominated by a church disproportionate to the size of the settlement: the parish church dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, with its imposing neoclassical dome, was financed precisely by local captains grown rich through maritime trade in the nineteenth century, in a competition for prestige with the neighbours of Dobrota that is still reflected in the facades of the houses.
From Prčanj also starts one of the roads climbing towards Mount Lovćen, offering an alternative and less-travelled vantage point over the bay, with scenic hairpin bends that gain hundreds of metres of altitude in just a few dozen minutes. It is a stop best reserved for those who have already seen Kotor and Perast and are looking for the more residential, less touristy side of the bay.
The Bay of Kotor, a gulf that behaves like a fjord
Geologically the Bay of Kotor is not a fjord carved by glaciers, but a ria, a karst river valley flooded by the sea after the last glaciation: the technical distinction matters little in the face of the spectacle of mountains exceeding 1,700 metres that plunge almost sheer into deep, narrow waters, in a sequence of four basins connected by narrow passages, the most striking of which is the Verige strait, just over three hundred metres wide. The result is a distinctive microclimate, more humid and less sun-drenched than the open coast, with vegetation alternating between Mediterranean scrub, terraced olive groves and cooler woods as one climbs towards the hinterland.
Behind the bay the terrain rises almost immediately towards Mount Lovćen and the Orjen mountains, opening up possibilities for trekking and excursions that in just a few kilometres take you from sea level to alpine panoramas, with views that on clear days take in the entire arc of the bay. This closeness between sea and high mountains, rare on the Adriatic, is probably the most distinctive trait of Kotor's landscape.
Flavours of the bay, between fish, pršut and wines from the hinterland
Kotor's cuisine reflects the territory's twin vocation, maritime and mountain. Fish and seafood from the bay dominate the table, cooked with Mediterranean simplicity, local olive oil and few herbs; fish brodetto, mussels farmed right in the bay and salt cod prepared according to recipes handed down by captains' families are almost obligatory presences in the restaurants of Kotor and Perast. From the mountainous hinterland, in particular from the village of Njeguši on the slopes of Mount Lovćen, come instead air-cured pršut and aged cheese, which for centuries have completed the local platters, often paired directly with fish in a contrast typical of this borderland cuisine.
To drink, the red wine Vranac, produced mainly in the Crmnica area further south, accompanies most meals; nor is rakija lacking, the home-distilled fruit brandy often offered as a welcome even before the menu. The season of village festivals, concentrated between late summer and early autumn, is the best time to taste these products in their own context, away from the old town's tourist menus.
When to go and how to experience Kotor without the crowds
Summer brings a very concentrated influx to Kotor, amplified by the almost daily arrival of large cruise ships that pour thousands of passengers into the old town in the same morning hours: in July and August the alleys of the old town can become congested by midday. May, June and September offer the same mild climate and sea already warm enough for swimming with a fraction of the crowds, as well as more bearable temperatures for the climb to the walls. Spring also offers a green hinterland and more accessible trails towards Mount Lovćen.
To avoid the daily cruise-ship peaks it is worth checking the scheduled dockings in advance and devoting the early morning hours or late afternoon to Kotor, when the raking light on the walls is also the most photogenic. Those staying several nights can alternate the old town with days based in Perast or Dobrota, which are quieter, using local boats or a car to get around the bay.
- Climb the walls to the Sveti Ivan fortress, at dawn or at sunset
- Cathedral of Saint Tryphon and its treasury of sacred goldwork
- Boat trip from Perast to the islands of Sveti Đorđe and Our Lady of the Rocks
- Evening stroll through the old town after the cruise ships have left
- Excursion along the scenic road towards Mount Lovćen
- Tasting of pršut and cheese from Njeguši with Vranac wine
FAQ
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Getting there
- Aeroporto di Tivat (TIV), circa 7 km da Kotor
- Aeroporto di Podgorica (TGD), circa 90 km
- Aeroporto di Dubrovnik in Croazia (DBV), circa 65 km
- Nessuna linea ferroviaria diretta a Kotor; la stazione più vicina è a Podgorica, collegata a Bar
- Kotor è servita dalla strada costiera adriatica (magistrala) che percorre l'intero golfo delle Bocche, collegando Tivat, Perast, Risan e il confine con la Croazia a nord.
- In alta stagione il traffico lungo la strada del golfo rallenta molto nelle ore centrali: meglio muoversi presto al mattino o dopo cena, soprattutto nei giorni con più navi da crociera in porto.
Perfect for
Quattro secoli di governo veneziano, una cattedrale del XII secolo e mura che raccontano dominazioni successive fino al Novecento.
Un golfo stretto tra montagne che sfiorano i 1700 metri, con microclimi e sentieri che portano dal mare alla quota alpina in pochi chilometri.
Isolette da raggiungere in barca, calette lungo Dobrota e Prčanj, acque calme adatte a chi cerca un bagno lontano dalle spiagge affollate.
La salita alle mura verso la fortezza di Sveti Ivan è una delle escursioni urbane più intense d'Adriatico, con oltre 1300 gradini e vista sul golfo intero.
Pesce del golfo e pršut di montagna sulla stessa tavola, con il Vranac dell'entroterra a fare da filo conduttore ai pasti.
To see
What to see in Kotor
Routes · Trovido Route
