Haj-Nehaj, the Venetian lookout above Sutomore

From the beach at Sutomore you can make out walls on top of a hill, and plenty of people leave without knowing what they are. They’re the remains of Nehaj, a small fortified town the Venetians built to keep watch over this coast. There’s little official information about it, so I’ll stick to what has actually been published.

What Nehaj was

The Bar tourist board describes Haj-Nehaj as the remains of the medieval town of Nehaj, built in the fifteenth century about 10 km north-west of Bar on an almost inaccessible hill above the sea, 225 metres up. The Venetians put it there for defence, and it first appears in a document of 1542. So this was no pleasure castle but a lookout post, placed where it commands the sea and the valley running down to Sutomore.

What’s left standing

What you’ll find are sections of wall and roofless houses among Mediterranean scrub, with grey mountains behind. There’s no museum, no visitor centre and no posted opening times in the official listing, so it’s a wander-at-will visit. That’s partly why I find it more atmospheric than ruins that have been tidied up, but go knowing there’s nothing up there to buy, not even a bottle of water.

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

Haj-Nehaj or Stari Bar?

Both appear on the Bar tourist board’s list of cultural heritage and you can see them on the same day. Stari Bar is much bigger, a whole town with an aqueduct and bazaar, a €3 ticket and fixed hours. Haj-Nehaj is smaller and wilder, and its trump card is its position above the sea. Short on time? Pick Stari Bar; if you can manage both, start there and leave this one for the end of the afternoon, when the light is softer.

What’s waiting below

The reward for coming down is the beach. Down below, Sutomore beach stretches for 1,200 metres, and the Bar tourist board says its sand has a name for easing rheumatism. Behind it are restaurants, cafés, shops and clubs, as Sutomore is where the young crowd on this coast heads. For something calmer, between Sutomore and Bar lie Crvena plaža, a 50-metre cove of red sand, and Ratac, the naturist beach on the cape of the same name.

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

Getting there

The hill rises above Sutomore, the liveliest resort on the Bar riviera, home to 1,816 people according to the preliminary 2023 census. Trains between Bar and Podgorica stop at Sutomore, so you can arrive without a car and set off on foot. The official listing doesn’t describe the path, so I’d go in walking shoes, with water and without rushing, and never in the hottest hours of July and August. My take on the rest of the municipality is in the guide to Bar.

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