The Maritime Museum of Montenegro, in the Grgurina Palace

Drive round the Bay of Kotor and every village shows you the same thing, stone palaces facing the water with a coat of arms over the door and a little jetty of their own. The explanation for all that wealth sits in one building in Kotor Old Town, the Grgurina Palace, home of the Maritime Museum of Montenegro. An hour is enough, and I’d make it your first stop in town.

A museum that explains the bay

The National Tourism Organisation puts it well. In Boka the sea meant everything, trade, contact with other peoples and a way to earn a living, and the museum exists to tell that story. In its description you’ll see how the captains lived in their cabins, which ships they sailed and with what equipment, the enemies and dangers they met on their voyages and how the weapons they carried changed over time.

Kotor’s tourist board lists it among the most visited and prominent buildings within the walls. Don’t expect endless glass cases; it’s a noble palace with collections spread through its rooms, and the building itself is part of the visit.

What it keeps from the bay

There’s one detail I particularly like. Palazzo Radomiri, a shipowners’ house in Dobrota, explains on its website that the Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Maria Coronelli drew a map in 1688 showing its building under the name Radomiri, and that the original of that map is in Kotor’s Maritime Museum. That sums the place up. It isn’t abstract history, it’s the story of the families whose houses you’ll be driving past later.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Kotor before prices climb.

Getting in without overpaying

Officially, you get in with the tourist board’s pass. The €19 version lasts a month and covers the museum, the aquarium, the cathedral and two Orthodox churches in the old town. City Pass M, at €30, adds five more sights, including the Perast Museum and the Roman mosaics at Risan. I found no single-entry price or opening hours published, so there’s none here.

If this museum is the only thing you’ll go into, the pass may not be worth it. Add St Tryphon Cathedral and the aquarium, though, and it’s paid for, and you can spread it over several days.

The other half of the story, in Perast

If naval history hooks you, the Perast Museum in the Bujović Palace completes the picture. According to Kotor Museums (OJU Muzeji Kotor), which runs it, Captain Marko Martinović set up the first nautical school in the Balkans in Perast in 1698 to train Russian noblemen, and Perast-born Matija Zmajević rose to admiral of the Russian fleet in 1727. I cover it on the Perast page, but the two museums make most sense together.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Kotor before prices climb.

When to go

By mid-morning the cruise passengers fill the old town and small museums feel it. I’d visit early or late, and always before you head off round the bay, so that every palace on the shore has a name and a story behind it.