Museums in Montenegro, from Cetinje to Kotor and Podgorica

Montenegro isn’t a museum destination, which is exactly why the good ones surprise. There’s a national museum spread across five buildings in one town, a maritime museum in a Kotor palace, a submarine in Tivat and even a museum devoted to cats. Here’s what I’d visit, based on official sources, with a warning about what I couldn’t confirm, such as prices in Cetinje.

Cetinje, the museum capital

If museums are your thing, this is where most of them are. The National Museum of Montenegro brings together, in the old royal capital, King Nikola’s Museum in his palace, Njegoš’s Museum in the Biljarda, the Historical, the Ethnographic and the Art museums. The Cetinje Tourism Organisation says the Biljarda keeps a 1:10,000 relief model of Montenegro made by Austro-Hungarian engineers, and the National Tourism Organisation singles out the icon of Our Lady of Philermos in the Art Museum. The National Museum also runs the Njegoš Mausoleum on Lovćen and his birthplace in Njeguši. It doesn’t publish prices anywhere I’ve been able to read. See museums in Cetinje and, for the palace, King Nikola’s Palace.

Kotor and the bay

In Kotor, the Maritime Museum of Montenegro occupies the Grgurina palace, and close by are Boka Aquarium, with 18 tanks and billed as the only public aquarium in the country, and the Cats Museum, which the National Tourism Organisation lists among the most popular. The practical option is the tourism board’s City Pass, explained in Kotor Old Town. The maritime collection has its own page in the Maritime Museum of Montenegro.

Around the bay, Perast has its museum in the Bujović palace, Prčanj a Museum of Living History housed in what used to be a monastery, and Risan its Roman mosaics, with the only Hypnos known. Perast and Risan are included in the €30 City Pass M.

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

Tivat and Herceg Novi

The country’s oddity is in Tivat. The naval museum shows the submarine Heroj, built in 1968 and roughly 50 m from bow to stern, as the National Tourism Organisation describes it; I cover it in the Heroj submarine. In Herceg Novi, the tourism board lists the ‘Mirko Komnenović’ Town Museum, with a botanical garden, the house-museum of Captain Miroslav Štumberger, the Josip Bepo Benković gallery and a museum devoted to Mikhail Bulgakov.

Budva and Podgorica

In Budva, the Town Museum holds grave goods from the necropolis uncovered in 1938 while the Avala hotel was being built, including a Greco-Illyrian helmet from the 5th century BC. Podgorica has the Titograd 80-ih Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Contemporary Art Centre and the Marko Miljanov Museum in Medun, according to its tourism board.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Cetinje and choose by the reviews.

Local museums inland

Off the usual routes, the local museums of Nikšić and Pljevlja hold remarkable pieces. Nikšić’s has finds from the Crvena stijena cave, a 180,000-year-old site; Pljevlja’s has more than 1,200 pieces from the graves of Municipium S, among them a diatreta glass.

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