Perast, the baroque village with two islands

Drive up the shore road from Kotor and there’s a moment when the bay opens out and you see, all at once, a very tall bell tower, a row of stone palaces on the water and two islands out in the bay, one dark with cypresses and the other topped with a blue dome. That’s Perast, and it’s why a lot of people come to Montenegro at all. Here’s what to see, what it costs and when to come so it doesn’t end up as a photo full of coaches.

Captains’ village, no walls

Kotor’s municipal museums sum up its story well. Perast had its golden age under Venice, from 1420 to 1797, because its position at the entrance to the inner bay gave it control over both defence and trade. It never had town walls. It relied on the Holy Cross fortress, built above the village in 1570, and on the towers that almost every noble palace had attached to it.

Its people were sailors, and teachers of sailors. In 1698 Captain Marko Martinović set up a nautical school here, the Balkans’ first, with Russian noblemen among his pupils, and local boy Matija Zmajević served Peter the Great and was made an admiral of his fleet in 1727. When steam ended the age of sail, the families turned to diplomacy and shipping agencies. According to the preliminary 2023 census, 240 people live in Perast today.

The two islands

Offshore sit the islands that made the village famous. St George is natural, with a 12th-century church and Perast’s old cemetery, and Kotor’s tourist board tells the legend of a French soldier and his sweetheart that reportedly inspired Böcklin’s painting The Isle of the Dead. Our Lady of the Rocks was made by hand, as sailors sank stones and old hulls onto a reef, and it has a church and a museum. Both have their own pages, one on St George island and one on Our Lady of the Rocks.

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The Perast Museum

It occupies the 17th-century Bujović Palace and was founded in 1937 from collections donated by local families. Today it holds over 3,000 objects. The ground floor has a room on the lives of Perast’s women, with dowry chests, costume and needlework, alongside Coronelli’s great atlas of 1690 and a 16th-century Perast sword. Upstairs is the captains’ salon, with portraits by Tripo Kokolja, the bay’s leading baroque painter, and a model of the Adriana, the last sailing ship of the village fleet. The arms room has a 17th-century Venetian cannon on its original carriage.

Tickets cost €8, or €5 for children up to 12, and there’s a €12 combined ticket with the mosaics at Risan. From 15 April to 15 October it’s open Tuesday to Sunday from 8:00 to 20:00, and 10:00 to 16:00 the rest of the year. It shuts on Mondays and for the whole of January.

St Nicholas and its bell tower

On the square stands St Nicholas Church, whose 55 m bell tower the National Tourism Organisation recommends for its view of the bay. It’s the building you can see from anywhere on the shore and the easiest landmark in a village stretched out along the water.

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Festivals with centuries behind them

Kotor’s tourist board lists three dates. On 1 May comes Kićenje mađa, when a young elm is decorated with bottles of milk and wine, dry biscuits and ribbons and planted in the square by the last groom of the year; it stays until 15 May, the month I cover in Montenegro weather in May. On the 15th itself, Perast celebrates beating the Ottomans in 1654, with a procession, Mass, the Boka Navy dancing and the traditional shooting at a rooster out on the water. In June there’s also a festival of klapa, the coast’s a cappella singing.

When to come and getting about

Perast is 12 km from Kotor, about 15 minutes by road according to the National Tourism Organisation. It’s a classic excursion from Kotor and Budva, and the waterfront shows it in the middle of the day. Come early or stay overnight. For food, the waterfront has restaurants right by the water, including Hotel Conte’s, which the Kasalica family opened in their restored stone houses.