Kotor Old Town, square by square

Most old towns have a main street you can follow. Kotor doesn’t. It doesn’t even have street names, which is half its charm. It’s a tangle of alleys opening on to lopsided squares, each with a church or a palace in the middle, wedged between the water and the limestone of Mount Lovćen. Here’s how to find your way, which doors are worth paying for and how to use the city pass without overspending.

A town that grew without a plan

Kotor’s tourist board dates the first written records to the 1st century AD, with signs of people living here as far back as the 6th century BC. In the early Middle Ages, families from the Grbalj valley fled the invasions up on to the mountainside, and their hamlets became the core of today’s town. Nobody drew a street plan, so it grew to fit whatever was needed at the time. Its historical name was Cattaro, which you’ll still spot on the odd hotel sign.

The lanes go by nicknames and the squares by what was once sold in them. Salad Square, Flour Square, Milk Square and the Square of Arms, the big one just inside the Sea Gate, are all still there. The same source counts around fifty churches built in and around the town between the 13th and 20th centuries; many were lost to earthquakes.

Three gates and a wall

There are three ways in. The Sea Gate, facing the harbour, is the main one and the one almost everybody uses, with the tourist information centre just inside. The River Gate to the north went up after the town saw off the pirate Barbarossa, and the South Gate is a triple gate with an 18th-century bridge over the Gurdić spring. From here the walls climb towards the fortress, and everything about that climb is on the Kotor city walls page.

The Region of Kotor has been on the UNESCO list since 1979, and in 2017 the walled town was also included in the list of Venetian defence works of the 16th and 17th centuries. The tourist board admits visitor numbers have surged since the early 2000s, many arriving by cruise ship, and that sets the rhythm of the day.

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The city pass, with no small print

Two passes are sold by the tourist board, both valid for a month. The S, at €19, covers five sights, all inside the walls, namely the Maritime Museum, Boka Aquarium, the cathedral and the churches of St Nicholas (Orthodox) and St Luke, which share a square. The M, at €30, adds five more. Three are in town, St Paul’s, a 13th-century church now used for exhibitions, the Gallery of Solidarity with over 400 works in the Pima Palace, and St Michael’s with its lapidarium on Cinema Square. The other two are out of town, the Roman mosaics at Risan and the Perast Museum.

The maths is easy. If you’re only seeing Kotor, buy the S. If you’re planning a day up the bay to Perast and Risan, the M already includes both museums and saves you buying separate tickets. The three churches in the S pass close for masses, weddings and baptisms, so don’t leave them all for a Saturday afternoon.

Museums with a story

The Maritime Museum of Montenegro fills the Grgurina Palace and shows how the bay’s captains lived. Boka Aquarium has 18 tanks over four zones, from the open ocean to tropical seas. Then there’s the Cats Museum, all postcards, stamps and books featuring cats; the National Tourism Organisation claims Europe has only one other like it. The real cats are everywhere and cost nothing.

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When to walk it

My Kotor rule holds here too. Squares first thing, because by mid-morning the cruise groups fill the Square of Arms and the alleys clog up. Check which days are heaviest on the Kotor cruise port schedule before you pick your old town day. Late afternoon, once the ships sail, is the best time for the cathedral and churches.

Sleeping and eating inside

There are small hotels in old palaces inside the walls, Hotel Vardar on the Square of Arms with its 24 rooms among them. The premium buys you an empty town after dark. For food, Konoba Scala Santa on Salad Square opens from 9:00 to 23:00 with the kitchen running 12:00 to 22:00, according to its website. If you’re here in June, the Kotor Pašta festival, held since 2013, celebrates the town’s cream cake, which is the one pudding I wouldn’t leave without trying.