Montenegro's four UNESCO World Heritage sites

Montenegro has four UNESCO World Heritage sites, and the odd thing is that half of them are shared with other countries. Two are in Kotor, though you wouldn’t guess it, one is the great mountain park of the north and the last is a set of medieval tombstones few travellers have heard of. Here they are, with what each UNESCO entry says and how I’d see them.

The Kotor region, since 1979

The oldest listing and the one everyone sees. UNESCO inscribed it in 1979, covering 14,600 hectares of the inner, south-eastern part of the bay, two linked bays ringed by mountains rising to nearly 1,500 m. Its entry explains that in the Middle Ages this was an artistic and trading centre with its own schools of masonry and iconography, and that the towns of sea captains and shipowners, led by Kotor and Perast, were for centuries Venice’s bridgeheads on the Adriatic.

That same year, the 1979 earthquake badly damaged many monuments, including four Romanesque churches and the town walls. The region went straight onto the Danger list and stayed there until 2003, after a restoration carried out largely with UNESCO’s help. Today the entry warns of a different threat, construction and urban sprawl. I’d start at the heart of it, Kotor Old Town.

The Venetian defences, since 2017

In 2017 UNESCO created a site made up of six Venetian fortifications from the 16th and 17th centuries spread across Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, over more than 1,000 km from Lombardy to the eastern Adriatic coast. The Montenegrin part is the fortified city of Kotor, with its walls and St John’s Fortress. That’s why I say Kotor is listed twice. The climb is covered in Kotor’s city walls.

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

Durmitor, the natural site

The country’s only natural listing went on in 1980 and was extended in 2005 to match the national park boundaries. UNESCO describes a landscape shaped by glaciers and rivers, with roughly fifty summits topping 2,000 m, the Tara Canyon, in its view the deepest gorge on the continent, an old-growth black pine forest with 400-year-old trees over 50 m tall, and the Ice Cave with its frozen stalactites. It also mentions brown bear, wolf and some 130 bird species. How to visit is in Durmitor National Park.

The stećci, since 2016

This is the one I most enjoy pointing people towards. Stećci are medieval stone tombstones, mostly limestone, carved between the 12th and 16th centuries and laid out in rows in graveyards. In 2016 UNESCO listed 28 sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, noting that more than 70,000 survive across over 3,300 locations in the region. Montenegro has three, Grčko groblje and Bare Žugića near Žabljak, and Grčko groblje at Plužine. The entry stresses that all three Christian communities of the time used them. Where to find them is in the stećci tombstones.

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

How I’d fit them together

Kotor and the Venetian defences are a single walk, half a day to a full day. Durmitor and the Žabljak stećci work well from the same base, with two nights in the north. With a week in the country, all four fit without forcing it.

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