Stari Bar, Montenegro's Pompeii on a rock

Some ruins take ten minutes. Others need a morning, and Stari Bar is one of those. It isn’t a castle or a single monument; it’s an entire town left empty on its rock, with streets, churches, mosques, baths and roofless houses, and you can wander it with hardly anyone else about.

Why it’s in ruins

The Bar tourist board describes a fortified town built on a huge rock massif, unreachable from the east and south, which for centuries was the seat from which the surrounding lands were ruled. Byzantines, Slavs, Venetians and Turks all passed through and left their mark. Only when the threat of war faded did people move down to the plain by the sea, where the new town of Bar grew up in the twentieth century. The national tourism office calls it Montenegro’s Pompeii and speaks of the ruins of more than 260 buildings.

What you’ll see inside

The walk takes you from the walls past the remains of palaces, churches, mosques, Turkish baths and the clock tower, renovated in 1753 when it took on its oriental look. The hammam keeps its dome on squinches, pierced by small openings for light and air. From the top of the walls, says the tourist board, you take in the Bar plain, the new town, the port, the open sea and the Rumija massif. What I like most is that it hasn’t been over-restored, so you can tell what’s original.

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The aqueduct and the olive grove

Outside the walls on the north side is the aqueduct the Ottomans built in the seventeenth century to bring water from a spring about 3 km away. It’s 17 arches of varying span on as many piers, and it’s the photo everyone takes home. Around it spreads the Džidžarin olive grove, one of the largest and most valuable in Bar, reached only on foot along the old cobbled track. The local olive growers have waymarked it as the Olive Paths, and in 2016, while the path was being laid, the remains of a medieval chapel thought to date from the thirteenth century turned up. The tourist board says there were once up to 100,000 olive trees here, and the most famous of all is the old olive tree of Mirovica.

The bazaar below

At the foot of the old town is the market founded by the Ottomans, which took its present shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is protected as a monument. Its street plan is oriental and its houses follow the Balkan folk tradition. The tourist board mentions stallholders in traditional dress selling citrus fruit, olives, olive oil, cheese and handicrafts. It’s the place for a bite after your visit.

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The old town’s mosques

The Ottoman legacy goes beyond the bazaar. Inside Stari Bar the Omerbašića Mosque still stands, built in 1662, plain and rectangular with its minaret set against the south-west wall, and protected as a cultural monument. By the entrance to its precinct is the mausoleum of Dervish Hasan from the early 17th century, with a public fountain and a house for the imam, all enclosed by a stone wall. The tourist board also mentions the Škanjevića Mosque. Close by, in Gornja Čeluga, rises the Selimija, one of the largest mosques in the Balkans, built on land that Fatima Omerbašić left to the Islamic community in the 19th century. The national tourist board holds it up, along with St Peter’s co-cathedral and the church of St Jovan Vladimir, as an example of places of worship of three faiths standing close together.

Planning your visit

Entry is €3, and €1 for children up to 12. Summer hours are 8:00 to 21:00, and out of season it shuts at 17:00. Early morning or the end of the afternoon is best, as the rock has no shade and in summer you’ll feel it. For walkers, a waymarked 6.5 km route links Stari Bar with Kajnak, Džidžarin and the Rikavac bridge, and the Vruća rijeka canyoning route finishes right by the walls. Shorter is the Rikavac canyon next to the old town, a kilometre long with six abseils, ten minutes on foot from the car park and doable in summer. If you’re still keen on old stone afterwards, the next step is Haj-Nehaj fortress above Sutomore.

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