Gornja Lastva, the hill village looking down on Tivat Bay

Tivat has two Lastvas, and the one worth the drive is the upper one. Donja Lastva sits on the water, practically part of town. Gornja Lastva stays up on the sunny side of Vrmac, among Mediterranean scrub and dry-stone walls, with the whole bay of Tivat below it. You go up for the view and come back down talking about the stonework.

A village that emptied, and is filling again

The Tivat tourist board says Gornja Lastva once had around 500 inhabitants and, like so many hill villages, lost most of them after the Second World War, when people moved down to the towns for an easier life. These days some families are coming back, doing up the old houses or building new ones. In the preliminary 2023 census MONSTAT doesn’t even publish the population, as it’s small enough to fall under statistical confidentiality, though it does count 22 dwellings. That tells you what to expect, a near-untouched and very quiet place.

Everything is stone

What makes Gornja Lastva special is the craftsmanship in the stone. It’s in the houses and walls, in carved garden furniture and in the troughs where olive oil was once stored. There’s a 19th-century olive mill that would still work, though it’s no longer used, where seven families of growers used to press their olives by hand, just as they did two centuries ago.

The mill belongs to the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, built in 1410, a small church holding treasures that have been looked after for six hundred years. When the door is open, step inside; when it’s locked, the outside and the little square around it are worth the trip on their own.

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When to go

If you’re visiting in summer, the date to note is the first Saturday of August, the village fête, which the tourist board describes as legendary. Any other day the village is peaceful, and the board says not to be surprised if a local invites you in for a glass of home-made brandy and some old stories. I can’t promise that, but it’s that kind of place.

My pick is to climb up as the sun drops, when the light slants across the bay and Porto Montenegro and the Luštica peninsula in the background. That’s the best of the visit.

Gornja Lastva and Mount Vrmac

The village makes a good way onto Mount Vrmac, the ridge 8 km long and 5 km wide that divides Tivat from Kotor. Its highest summit, Sveti Ilija, stands at 785 m according to the tourist board, and its slopes carry walking and mountain-bike trails, with drinking-water springs and the remains of forts from several eras. If you enjoy a hike, walking up from Gornja Lastva towards the ridge is what I’d do.

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Where to stay and getting there

There are no hotels in the village. The sensible plan is to stay down in town and drive up in a few minutes; my pick of places is in hotels in Tivat. Beach in the morning, Gornja Lastva in the evening, and you’ve made good use of a day in this corner of the Bay of Kotor.

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