Herceg Novi is the town that welcomes you to the Bay of Kotor: a bright, flower-filled place that tumbles like an amphitheatre from the mountains down to the sea, in the far north-west of Montenegro, almost touching Croatia. People call it 'the town of a thousand steps' because its old town is a constant up and down of stairways among bougainvillea, palm trees and oleanders, with sunny squares looking out over the Adriatic. Founded in 1382 by a Bosnian king, it changed hands so many times —Ottomans, Spaniards, Venetians, Austrians— that each one left it a fortress, and today it is a small showcase of Mediterranean military history.
The plan is to get lost in the old town: pass through the Clock Tower (Sat kula), the old town gate; head down to Forte Mare, the fortress by the water; climb up to Kanli Kula, the Ottoman 'bloody tower' that is now an open-air amphitheatre with superb views; and, for keen walkers, scramble up to the Španjola fortress, of Spanish origin, at the top. All of it dotted with churches, cafés and viewpoints. Down below, the long Pet Danica seafront promenade links beaches, swimming platforms and restaurants, and boats leave from the pier for the Blue Cave, the island fortress of Mamula and the coves of the Luštica peninsula.
This guide covers Herceg Novi with a practical, honest eye: how to get there (via Tivat, via Dubrovnik across the border, or by ferry across the mouth of the bay), what the fortresses and boat trips really cost, where to swim, what the Mimosa Festival is and why this town with its mild climate and thermal waters in Igalo is also a destination for health and rest. Less monumental than Kotor, but more relaxed, green and authentic: a town to enjoy without rushing.
Herceg Novi was founded in 1382 by the Bosnian king Tvrtko I Kotromanić, who wanted a port of his own to compete with Dubrovnik in the salt trade; he first called it Sveti Stefan and then Novi ('the new one'). After his death it passed to the dukes Sandalj Hranić and Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, whose title of herceg (duke) gave the town its definitive name: Herceg Novi. In 1482 it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled it for two centuries and left it the Kanli Kula tower-prison. Between 1538 and 1539 there was a brief Spanish occupation, with an army of Charles V that built the Španjola fortress before being defeated by the Ottomans in the siege of Castelnuovo. In 1687 the Republic of Venice took the town from the Turks and governed it until 1797, strengthening its defences. Then came the Austrian Empire, the brief Napoleonic period and Austria-Hungary again, until it became part of Yugoslavia after the First World War. Its many fortresses —Turkish, Spanish, Venetian, Austrian— bear witness to that contested history. The full story is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Unlike almost every other town on the Bay of Kotor, whose roots go back to Illyrian and Roman antiquity, Herceg Novi is a medieval foundation with a precise date: the spring of 1382. Its founder was Tvrtko I Kotromanić, the powerful king of Bosnia, who wanted a port of his own on the Adriatic to break the trade monopoly of rich neighbouring Dubrovnik (Ragusa), above all in the lucrative salt business. Tvrtko picked a strategic spot at the entrance to the bay, sheltered by the mountains and with a good anchorage, and there he built a new fortified town.
At first he called it Sveti Stefan, after the patron saint of his dynasty, but the name people actually used soon won out: Novi, meaning 'the new one' (in Latin, Castrum Novum or Castel Nuovo, as the Italians and Venetians would call it). So the city was born as a commercial and political tool, a challenge to the established order on the Adriatic. Its life, however, would be anything but quiet: sitting at a crossroads of empires and routes, Herceg Novi became one of the most fought-over strongholds on the coast, and it changed hands again and again over the following centuries, with each new owner leaving behind a new fortress.
After the death of Tvrtko I, the city passed to the great feudal lords of the region. First it was held by Duke Sandalj Hranić Kosača, and then by his nephew and heir, Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, one of the most powerful nobles in the 15th-century Balkans, who ruled a vast territory inland. Stjepan Vukčić took the title of herceg ('duke', borrowed from the German Herzog), which is why his domain came to be called Hercegovina ('the duke's land'), the name that still refers to the southern half of Bosnia and Herzegovina today.
That ducal title stuck to the city as well. Novi, the herceg Stjepan's stronghold on the coast, began to be known as Herceg Novi, 'the duke's new town', and that is the name it has kept to this day. Under the Kosača family, the city was a busy port and a court of some importance, with trade and diplomatic contacts all over the Adriatic. But the unstoppable rise of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans was about to change everything. The power of the great Bosnian dukes was crumbling before the Turkish advance, and Herceg Novi, as the maritime key to those lands, was a coveted prize. In 1482, barely a century after its founding, the city fell to the Ottomans, opening a new and long chapter in its history.
The Ottoman conquest of 1482 turned Herceg Novi into a frontier stronghold of the Turkish Empire on the Adriatic, and so it would remain, with one notable interruption, for two centuries. The Ottomans fortified the city and built, among other works, the prison tower of Kanli Kula ('the bloody tower'), famous for its sinister reputation. Herceg Novi was a useful port for the Turkish fleet and a constant point of friction with Christian Venice, which controlled the rest of the bay.
The most dramatic episode of this period was the Spanish interlude. In 1538, during the wars between Emperor Charles V and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, an expedition of the Holy League, led by Spanish troops, took Herceg Novi (Castelnuovo to them). The Spanish occupied the city and began building a fortress on the heights, the one still known today as the Španjola ('the Spanish one'). But the occupation was short-lived. In the summer of 1539, a huge Ottoman army under Admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa laid siege to the city. The Spanish garrison, a few thousand soldiers, many of them veterans of the tercios, held out with enormous tenacity during the siege of Castelnuovo, but was in the end almost completely wiped out. The fall was a military disaster for Spain and one of the tragic feats remembered in the history of the tercios. The Ottomans took Herceg Novi back and kept it for almost another century and a half, leaving the Španjola unfinished as a witness to that brief and bloody Spanish chapter in the city's history.
Ottoman rule ended in 1687, during the War of the Holy League that followed the Turkish failure at Vienna. That year, the Republic of Venice conquered Herceg Novi and added it to its province of Venetian Albania, along with the rest of the Bay of Kotor. Venice would rule the city for a little over a century, until 1797, and strengthened its defences once again: the Venetians enlarged and modified the existing fortresses, folding the Turkish and Spanish works into a defensive system of their own. Under the Serenissima, Herceg Novi enjoyed a period of relative stability and maritime prosperity, as part of the trade networks of the Venetian Adriatic.
The fall of Venice, once again at Napoleon's hands, opened a century of changing flags. Under the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797), the city passed to the Austrian Empire; during the Napoleonic Wars it changed hands, with Russian, French and Montenegrin presence, and for a time became part of the French Illyrian Provinces. After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 confirmed Herceg Novi as part of the Austrian Empire, within the Kingdom of Dalmatia, where it would stay for a century. The Austrians also left their military mark, with new batteries and fortifications in the area, such as the fortress on the island of Mamula, at the entrance to the bay. With the First World War over and the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, in 1918 Herceg Novi joined, together with Montenegro and the Boka, the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would become Yugoslavia.
The 20th century turned Herceg Novi from a contested military stronghold into a town of tourism, health and culture. Back under Austria-Hungary, a small spa tourism scene had already grown up in nearby Igalo, making use of the area's medicinal mud and waters. In socialist Yugoslavia that calling took hold: the large Igalo physiotherapy institute was built (it would later bear the name of the doctor Simo Milošević), a leading health tourism centre that drew patients from all over the country and abroad. The mild climate and lush subtropical vegetation, partly the result of plants brought over the centuries by sailors and gardeners, made Herceg Novi a pleasant destination almost all year round.
Its best-loved festival also dates from that time: the Mimosa Festival, held every February since 1969, when the mimosa blossom turns the town yellow and the streets fill with music, parades and flowers. The Second World War had left dark episodes in the area, such as the Italian occupiers' use of the Mamula fortress as a prison camp; but the post-war years brought decades of tourism growth. After the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which Herceg Novi lived through with an influx of refugees and the regional crisis, and Montenegro's independence in 2006, the town has reasserted itself as one of the most appealing destinations in the Boka: less monumental than Kotor, but greener, quieter and more authentic. Today its many fortresses (Turkish, Spanish, Venetian, Austrian), its thousand flower-lined stairways and its long seafront promenade together tell the story of a town that was born to sell salt and ended up collecting empires.
