Fortresses and walled towns of Montenegro

Anyone looking for a castle in Montenegro tends to picture fairytale towers and battlements, and what they find is something different but just as interesting. Venetian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian fortresses, walled towns and the ruins of entire cities, nearly always with the sea or a lake below. Here are the ones with an official write-up, in the order I’d visit them.

Kotor and St John’s Fortress

The most famous, and rightly so. The National Tourism Organisation describes a 4.5 km wall that zigzags up the mountain to St John’s, the fortress perched 300 m over the water, and back down again, with around 1,400 steps and an hour’s visit. In 2017 UNESCO added the fortified city of Kotor to its listing of 16th and 17th-century Venetian defences. No official site I’ve read publishes the entry price, so I’d rather not guess. The climb, step by step, is in Kotor’s city walls.

Herceg Novi and the mouth of the bay

Herceg Novi is the town of fortresses. Its tourism board lists Kanli kula, a 16th-century Ottoman fort now used as an open-air stage, and Forte Mare, from the 14th century. The National Tourism Organisation adds Španjola, which it ties to the few months of Spanish rule in 1538. See Kanli kula.

At the mouth of the bay, the same source names three 19th-century Austro-Hungarian forts, Arza, Mamula and Prevlaka. Mamula is now a hotel, according to a 2023 news item from the National Tourism Organisation, and I cover it in Mamula. Further in, above Kotor and Tivat, stand the forts of Goražde and Vrmac.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Kotor on Expedia and filter by area before price.

Budva, Bar and Ulcinj

Budva has its Citadel inside the old town, with a museum, a library and a fish relief, in an old town that, by the tourism board’s reckoning, has stood for over two and a half millennia. Bar holds the coast’s most striking ruin, Stari Bar, with more than 260 buildings, an aqueduct, Turkish baths, mosques and a clock tower, 5 km from the sea, plus the fortress of Haj-Nehaj. Details are in Stari Bar.

Ulcinj, at the southern end of the coast, was a pirate base from 1571 according to the same source, which attributes its walls to the ancient Greeks and recalls its slave market. Its old quarter is covered in Ulcinj Old Town.

The forts of Lake Skadar

The lake is the unknown quantity on this list. The National Tourism Organisation mentions Lesendro, from the 19th century, which it calls the ‘key to the lake’; Grmožur, a prison island it nicknames the ‘Montenegrin Alcatraz’; and the Turkish fortress of Besac above Virpazar. The National Parks add Žabljak Crnojevića to the park’s cycling routes. Besac, the one overlooking the village, has its own page in Besac Fortress.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Kotor and pick one that fits your day.

How I’d fit them in

St John’s first thing, before the heat and the cruise passengers. Stari Bar on a slow afternoon. And if you take a boat out on Lake Skadar, ask for a route past Lesendro and Grmožur, which make more sense from the water than from the road.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Kotor on Booking.com and filter by area before price.