Žabljak, the mountain town at the gates of Durmitor

You don’t go to Žabljak for the town, you go for what surrounds it, so set your expectations before you arrive. It’s a small mountain settlement, 1,499 people at the 2023 census, rebuilt almost entirely after the war at the foot of the Durmitor massif. But from here you can walk to the Black Lake, the Tara Canyon viewpoint is four kilometres away and the best scenic drive in the north, to my mind, starts in the centre. That’s why it logged 42,214 tourist arrivals in 2024, nearly as many as Kolašin.

The highest town in the Balkans

The national tourist board bills Žabljak as the highest town on the Balkan peninsula, at 1,453 metres, while the local tourist board says 1,450. Around it, on the local board’s count, are 23 peaks above 2,200 metres and 18 mountain lakes. It’s not a record you feel walking round, but you feel it in the weather. The tourist board gives annual means of between 2 and 8 °C for the area and around 120 days a year with more than 15 centimetres of snow, and notes that autumn here is milder than spring.

The town’s history is short and harsh. The name was made official in 1870, on the same day work began on the church, the school and the captain’s house. In the Second World War it burned to the ground and only the Church of the Transfiguration, built in 1862, survived. What you see today is the post-war rebuild, with tourism as the engine. Žabljak is also where parliament, meeting in an extraordinary open-air session, declared Montenegro an ecological state and named the town its ecological capital, according to the tourist board.

The Black Lake and Durmitor National Park

Žabljak is the gateway to Durmitor National Park, a World Heritage Site since 1980. Entry costs €5 per person per day and includes the visitor centre, on the lakeshore, and the nature trails.

The Black Lake is the one nobody skips. It lies three kilometres south-west of the centre, at 1,418 metres, and is made up of two basins joined by a narrow channel, the Big and the Little Lake. The path round it is about 3.5 km and flat, and wooden rowing boats are hired out from the shore at €10 an hour. I like it first thing, before the day-trippers turn up.

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

Ćurevac, the Tara and the Durmitor ring

To look into the Tara Canyon without going down to the river, head for the Ćurevac viewpoint at 1,625 metres. Its turning is 4 km from the centre, on the same road where the Durmitor ring, the Durmitorski prsten, begins. It’s a 76 km circuit signed in both directions with brown boards bearing the number 2. The tourist board suggests driving it anticlockwise if you’re using its audio guide and clockwise in a motorhome, and warns that it isn’t built for large motorhomes.

The road climbs to the saddle below Štuoc at 1,952 metres, which the tourist board describes as the highest point in Montenegro you can reach on tarmac. Before that, 8 km from town, is the Momčilov Grad restaurant, with a terrace and views beside the top station of a ski lift. Afterwards you drop towards the Sušica canyon and the hamlet of Mala Crna Gora, which sits between the Tara and Sušica canyons at 1,300 to 1,500 metres and has 14 year-round residents according to the tourist board.

Savin Kuk, snow in winter and a chairlift in summer

The Savin Kuk ski area is 6 km from the centre, with 4.6 km of pistes according to the national tourist board. In summer the chairlift keeps running for sightseeing. On Turistički Centar Durmitor’s summer 2026 price list it cost €12 for adults and €8 for children, with a first section of 1,550 metres up to 1,907 and a second of 700 to near the Savina voda spring at 2,212.

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

Sleeping, eating and getting there

The town is small and fills up in summer and over Christmas, so I’d book early. The options by area are in the guide to hotels in Žabljak. For food, the tourist board lists eleven restaurants, and the local cooking is dairy and meat. National Parks mentions kajmak, cheese, kačamak, cicvara, buckwheat pies and boiled lamb.

There’s no railway to Žabljak. The national tourist board gives two roads from Podgorica, 122 km via Nikšić or 124 km via Kolašin and Mojkovac through the Morača and Tara canyons, and 169 km from Dubrovnik via Trebinje and Nikšić. Private buses run, but to get around the park a car is close to essential, on narrow, twisting roads where you keep right.

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