Beaches in Bar, from the town to Utjeha and Lake Skadar

Bar isn’t known as a beach destination, and that’s partly the town’s own doing, as it’s a working port before it’s a resort. But the municipality has more than 46 km of coastline and around twenty beaches which, according to its tourist board, add up to about nine kilometres. I’ve listed them north to south in the order you’d come across them by car, and I’ve added the two on the lake, because they belong to Bar too.

In town, Topolica and Žukotrlica

The town beach is Topolica, half a kilometre of pebbles stretching between the marina and the Željeznica river. The tourist board pitches it as one of the easiest to get to, with King Nikola’s promenade, the museum, a children’s playground and water sports alongside. Žukotrlica, also in town, stretches for 1,000 metres and 55,000 m² of pebbles, and its name has a story behind it. Spanish broom, žukva locally, used to be rubbed in the sea here to soften it for weaving.

Between Bar and Sutomore

South of the port, behind Volujica hill, is Crvena stijena, a red-rock cove best visited by boat. Heading north, Cape Ratac shelters the municipality’s naturist beach, split in two by the headland and screened from the road by pine trees, with the ruins of the 11th-century Benedictine monastery of the Virgin Mary of Ratac at the tip. Next come Red Beach, a 50-metre bay of reddish sand with a legend about sea nymphs combing their hair on the cliff, and Štrbine, 100 metres long and a good place for sunset.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Sutomore for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.

Sutomore and Čanj, the big two

The beach at Sutomore is 1,200 metres long and covers 56,000 m² of sand that the tourist board credits with easing rheumatism. It’s the best equipped and the busiest, with bars, shops and partying late into the night. In the same resort, Golden Coast, 240 metres long, is the Inex hotel’s sandy beach for its guests. Between Sutomore and Čanj lies Maljevik, pebbly with very clean water, where the remains of an ancient temple turned up two metres down in 2009. At Čanj, the Pearl Coast adds another 1,200 metres of pebbles, with boats to Queen’s Beach in Pećin bay, which you can only reach by sea.

South to Dobra Voda and Utjeha

Beyond the town, the Bar Riviera has Veliki pijesak in Dobra Voda, 380 metres long and often wavy as it faces the open sea; Olive Bay at Utjeha, 200 metres with an olive grove behind; Paljuškovo, pebbles and sand; and Hladna uvala, a rocky cove for swimming well away from it all.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Sutomore on GetYourGuide.

And on Lake Skadar

The municipality also reaches Lake Skadar, with Murići, 560 metres long, which the tourist board rates the largest and most beautiful sandy beach on the lake shore, and Pješačac, a tiny 500 m² beach below Godinje reached only by a footpath, looking out to the island of Grmožur. If you’re picking dates, the Bar tourist board puts the swimming season between mid-May and mid-October, with the sea averaging 23.2 °C in July.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Sutomore for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.