Long before anything like Montenegro existed, these coasts and mountains were home to Illyrian peoples: the Labeates around Lake Skadar and, above all, the Docleatae, who gave the region its name. In the 3rd century BC the Illyrian kingdom of Queen Teuta flourished here, and its piracy in the Adriatic gave Rome the pretext to intervene in the so-called Illyrian Wars. By around 168 BC the area had come under Roman rule.
Rome folded the territory into the province of Dalmatia and founded the city of Doclea (near present-day Podgorica), an urban centre with a forum, baths and basilicas whose ruins can still be visited. The coast was thoroughly Romanised: ports such as Risinium (Risan), on the Bay of Kotor, and Butua (Budva) prospered on maritime trade. When the Empire split in 395, the region ended up on the eastern side, under Byzantium, a fact that would forever tie it to the Orthodox Christian world.
Between the 6th and 7th centuries, waves of Slavic peoples settled in the western Balkans and mixed with the Romanised population. From that blend —Slavs, Illyrian remnants and Romance speakers— the Montenegrin people would emerge over the centuries.
Around the 9th century, the Slavic principality of Duklja arose on the old territory of Doclea, one of three centres (along with Travunia and Rascia) covering present-day Montenegro. Its great moment came with the Vojislavljević dynasty: in 1042 Stefan Vojislav defeated a Byzantine army at the battle of Bar and secured Duklja's independence from Constantinople.
Under his son Mihailo and his grandson Konstantin Bodin, Duklja reached its peak. In 1077 Pope Gregory VII recognised Mihailo as king and granted him royal insignia: it was the first crowned kingdom of the future Montenegro. Bodin (1081–1101) extended his rule over Rascia, Bosnia and part of the interior. This period also produced the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja (Ljetopis popa Dukljanina), one of the oldest —and most debated— narrative sources for early Balkan history; historians still argue over how much of it is fact and how much legend.
After Bodin's death, dynastic struggles weakened Duklja, which steadily lost ground to the Serbian kingdom of Rascia. By the 13th century even the country's name had changed: people stopped speaking of Duklja and began to use the name Zeta.
During the 12th and 13th centuries, Zeta became part of the powerful Serbian state of the Nemanjić dynasty, and one of its most important provinces: the heir to the throne customarily governed Zeta as a kind of apprenticeship. The region enjoyed a period of prosperity, with the Serbian Orthodox Church taking root and coastal cities such as Kotor keeping their commercial autonomy under Venetian influence.
When the Serbian Empire fell apart after the death of Tsar Dušan in 1355, Zeta regained its autonomy under the Balšić family, who ruled from the late 14th century until 1421. They were followed by the Crnojević family, the last independent dynasty of medieval Zeta. It was Ivan Crnojević who, under pressure from the Ottoman advance, moved his court into the folds of the mountains: in 1482 he founded Cetinje at the foot of Lovćen, and in 1484 the monastery that would make it the spiritual centre of the country.
His son Đurađ Crnojević set up one of the first printing presses in south-eastern Europe there in 1493, and in 1494 it produced the Oktoih, one of the first books printed in Cyrillic script in the Slavic world. Shortly afterwards, around 1496, the Crnojević family had to give way to the Ottoman Empire, which absorbed Zeta. But the mountains were never fully conquered.
Although formally part of the Ottoman Empire, highland Montenegro —the massif around Cetinje— was never truly governed by Istanbul. In a poor, rugged land organised into warrior clans (plemena), the Ottomans could barely collect taxes, and punitive expeditions ended in ambushes among the rocks time and again.
In that power vacuum, the only authority able to unite the clans was the Church. From the early 16th century, the vladika —the Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Cetinje— gradually took on political and military leadership as well. The result was an unusual theocracy: a small monastery-state ruled by prince-bishops who were both shepherds of souls and war chiefs. From 1697 the office became hereditary in the house of Petrović-Njegoš: since bishops were celibate, the title passed from uncle to nephew.
Vladika Danilo I (who ruled from 1697) cut ties with Istanbul, sought the protection of Orthodox Russia and fought constant wars against the Ottomans. Montenegrin history in these centuries is one of almost unbroken resistance, later celebrated as a national epic, though it also had its share of violent internal episodes.
The best-known figure of the Montenegrin theocracy is Petar II Petrović Njegoš (1813–1851): vladika, statesman and, above all, the greatest poet of the language. He ruled from 1830 and modernised the little state: he created a senate, introduced regular taxes, founded schools and printing presses and tried to impose central authority over the blood feuds between clans.
His masterpiece, Gorski vijenac ("The Mountain Wreath", 1847), is the national poem of both Montenegro and Serbia: a verse tragedy set in the struggle against the Ottomans and against converts to Islam. It is also an uncomfortable text, because it idealises an episode —the so-called "extermination of the converts"— whose historicity scholars dispute and whose tone modern readers approach with reservations. Even so, Njegoš is the strongest cultural link between Montenegro and Serbia, and both identities still claim him as their own.
He died of tuberculosis in 1851 and asked to be buried on the summit of Mount Lovćen, the mountain that towers over Cetinje. His mausoleum up there, at more than 1,600 metres, is today one of the country's national symbols.
In 1852, Vladika Danilo II decided to marry and give up the church side of the office: he separated Church and State and proclaimed himself knjaz (prince) Danilo I, turning the theocracy into a secular principality. Montenegro was still tiny and poor, but it was increasingly recognised as a player. In 1858, at the battle of Grahovac, the Montenegrins inflicted a heavy defeat on the Ottomans, a victory that boosted their prestige and their territorial claims.
The big leap came with Nikola I Petrović, prince from 1860. During the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878, Montenegro fought alongside Russia and Serbia against the Ottoman Empire. Victory and Russian diplomacy paid off: at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the great powers formally recognised Montenegro's independence and almost doubled its territory, handing it towns such as Nikšić, Podgorica, Bar and Ulcinj, so that the country finally gained its own outlet to the sea.
After centuries of resistance, Montenegro thus became a sovereign state recognised by Europe, one of the first in the Balkans to do so.
In 1910, to mark his fiftieth year in power, Prince Nikola I proclaimed himself king: Montenegro became a kingdom. Nikola wove a clever dynastic web by marrying his daughters into the royal houses of Italy, Russia and Serbia, which earned him the nickname "father-in-law of Europe". Cetinje, the tiny capital, came to host a remarkable number of foreign legations and embassies, many of whose buildings still stand.
In the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Montenegro fought alongside Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria against the Ottoman Empire. Its troops took Shkodra (Scutari), although pressure from the great powers forced it to hand the city over to newly created Albania; in return, the country expanded north and east, taking in areas such as Berane, Pljevlja and part of the Sandžak.
It was the high point of independent Montenegrin statehood. But the First World War, which broke out the following year, would end up wiping the kingdom off the map.
When the First World War broke out, Montenegro sided with Serbia and the Entente powers against Austria-Hungary. Its troops held out stubbornly —the battle of Mount Lovćen is remembered as a heroic feat— but in early 1916 the small country was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army, and King Nikola and his government went into exile.
When the war ended, in November 1918, an assembly met in Podgorica and voted to depose the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty and unite Montenegro with the Kingdom of Serbia, within the future Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. That decision split the country and still splits its memory today: for some (the "Whites") it was a free and welcome union with the sister Serbian nation; for others (the "Greens") it was an imposed annexation that erased independence. In January 1919, an uprising by supporters of independence, known as the Christmas Uprising (Božićni ustanak), was crushed.
Montenegro thus vanished as a state and was dissolved into the new Yugoslav kingdom, without even existing as a separate unit. It would have to wait until the Second World War to have its own name back on the map.
In 1941, after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Montenegro came under Italian occupation. Rome tried to restore a puppet Montenegrin kingdom, relying on some "Green" separatists, but the plan failed at once. On 13 July 1941 a massive popular uprising broke out against the occupiers: it was one of the first armed insurrections in occupied Europe, and the date became a national holiday (Dan državnosti, Statehood Day).
The war that followed was brutal and also fratricidal: the communist Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito fought both the Italian and German occupiers and the royalist Chetniks. Montenegro, with its warrior tradition, gave a very high share of the Partisan resistance's fighters and dead. Axis reprisals were savage, with mass shootings of civilians.
The Partisan movement emerged victorious from that war, and with it Tito's socialist Yugoslavia. Montenegro would at last be one of its constituent republics.
In 1945 Montenegro was recognised as one of the six republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, regaining a state identity of its own within the federation. It was one of the smallest and poorest republics, but also one of the most loyal to the regime, with a strong presence in the army and the federal administration.
The post-war years brought rapid modernisation: industry (the big steelworks in Nikšić, aluminium in Podgorica), electrification, roads, schools and the beginnings of Adriatic tourism. In 1946 Podgorica became the capital of the republic, and in 1948 it was renamed Titograd ("Tito's city"), a name it kept until 1992. The old royal capital, Cetinje, remained the historical and cultural centre.
These decades also cemented the question of Montenegrin identity: the regime recognised Montenegrins as a distinct nation, although a large part of the population still identified —and still identifies— as Serb. That tension between Montenegrin and Serb identity would run through everything that came after.
When Yugoslavia collapsed into war in the early 1990s, Montenegro took a different path from Croatia, Slovenia or Bosnia: in a 1992 referendum it chose to stay with Serbia, forming the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia together. Montenegrin leader Momir Bulatović was at the time an ally of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević.
The partnership came at a cost. Montenegro was hit by the international sanctions imposed on Milošević's Serbia, and Montenegrin units and reservists took part in the 1991 shelling and looting of the Croatian region of Dubrovnik, an episode for which the country's authorities apologised years later. During the war there were also handovers of Bosnian Muslim refugees who were later murdered, another dark chapter acknowledged afterwards.
In the late 1990s, however, the course changed. Milo Đukanović, until then Milošević's man, broke with Belgrade, moved Montenegro closer to the West and, in the middle of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, kept the country out of the Kosovo conflict. That shift opened the way to separation.
The divorce from Serbia was gradual. As early as 1999 Montenegro adopted the German mark as its de facto currency to escape hyperinflation of the Yugoslav dinar, and in early 2002 —when the mark was replaced in Germany— it switched to the euro unilaterally, without being a member of the European Union or the eurozone, a status it still shares with Kosovo today.
In 2003 the federation was refounded as a loose union called Serbia and Montenegro, with a clause allowing an independence referendum after three years. That vote took place on 21 May 2006 under strict conditions set by the European Union: independence needed 55% of the vote to be valid. The result was extremely close: 55.5% voted for separation, only just above the threshold. On 3 June 2006 Montenegro declared independence, regaining the sovereignty it had lost in 1918.
The country was back on the map as the youngest in Europe, with its old historical capital in Cetinje and its administration in Podgorica, but with a society split almost down the middle over the very idea of the nation.
Independent Montenegro bet heavily on Euro-Atlantic integration. It applied to join the European Union in 2008, gained candidate status in 2010 and opened accession negotiations in 2012; today, alongside other Western Balkan states, it is one of the most advanced candidates, with the stated goal of wrapping up the process around the mid-2020s.
On 5 June 2017, despite strong pressure from Russia and an alleged coup plot during the 2016 elections, Montenegro became NATO's 29th member. It was a decisive geopolitical shift for a country with a pro-Russian, Orthodox tradition, and it caused tensions both at home and with Moscow.
At home, the long era of Milo Đukanović —who dominated politics for almost three decades— ended in 2020, when an opposition coalition won the elections amid a fierce dispute over a law on the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Montenegrin politics is still shaped by the tug-of-war between Montenegrin and Serb identities, religious tensions and demands to tackle corruption and organised crime. With fewer than 630,000 inhabitants, the euro in its pocket and the NATO flag flying, this small Adriatic country faces its third century of statehood trying, once again, to decide for itself who it is.
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The Bay of Kotor —Boka Kotorska in the local language— is a deep inlet of sea between mountains, so narrow and winding that it is often called, with some poetic licence, Europe's southernmost fjord (geologically it is a submerged river canyon, not a glacial fjord). Its enclosed geography made it a sheltered natural harbour for centuries and a meeting point of cultures: Catholics and Orthodox, Latin and Slavic heritage live side by side here.
Risan (the ancient Illyrian-Roman Risinium) was already Queen Teuta's capital in the 3rd century BC. Under Rome and then Byzantium, the bay was a thriving maritime enclave. In the Middle Ages its towns enjoyed broad communal autonomy, with their own statutes and a busy commercial life that connected them to the whole Adriatic basin.
Between 1420 and 1797 the Bay of Kotor belonged to the Republic of Venice, as part of the province of Venetian Albania. Those nearly four centuries shaped the Boka as it looks today: Kotor's walls, the bell towers, the stone palaces, the lions of St Mark carved above the gates and a whole urban culture with Italian roots.
Under Venetian protection the bay withstood repeated Ottoman sieges —the most famous in 1657— and held out as a Christian stronghold against the Turkish expansion that controlled the interior. Kotor kept its privileges and considerable autonomy, and its merchant and seafaring class prospered on the back of Venetian trade in the eastern Mediterranean.
Above all, the Boka was a land of sailors. Its captains sailed for Venice and later for Russia, and its nautical schools were famous across the Adriatic. The most dazzling case is Perast, a tiny town that at its height, in the 17th and 18th centuries, owned a fleet of dozens of ships and Baroque palaces paid for by its captains.
Perast was even home to the nautical school where, according to tradition, officers sent by Tsar Peter the Great of Russia studied. Opposite the town, on an artificial islet built up over centuries by dropping stones and sinking ships, stands the church of Our Lady of the Rocks (Gospa od Škrpjela), raised around a Marian legend and decorated with sailors' votive offerings. It is the emblem of a culture that lived facing the sea.
At the mouth of the bay, Herceg Novi has a history of changing flags that you can read in its walls. It was founded in 1382 by the Bosnian king Tvrtko I and takes its name from Duke (herceg) Stjepan Vukčić Kosača. It fell to the Ottomans in 1482 and remained a Turkish stronghold on the Adriatic for almost two centuries.
In 1687, during the Morean War, Venice took it. Later it passed briefly through Spanish, French, Austrian, Russian and Montenegrin hands, following the ups and downs of the Napoleonic and Balkan eras. Each ruler left its fortress: the Forte Mare, the Ottoman Kanli Kula ("bloody tower"), the Spanish Španjola. That layering of walls turns the town, terraced above the sea among stairways and bougainvillea, into a visible summary of the whole history of the Boka.
With the fall of Venice in 1797 and the Napoleonic interlude, the bay ended up, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, in the hands of the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Empire, which ran it as a naval base until 1918 —Tivat, in particular, grew into an arsenal for the imperial navy—. In 1918 the Boka became part of the Yugoslav state and shared its fate through the 20th century.
In 1979 a violent earthquake shook the Montenegrin coast and badly damaged the heritage of Kotor and the bay. That same year UNESCO inscribed the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor on the World Heritage List and even, for a time, on the List of World Heritage in Danger, to fund its restoration. Today the Boka combines that monumental legacy with cruise tourism and luxury marinas such as Porto Montenegro in Tivat, in a delicate balance between memory and development.
Montenegro's central coast is dominated by Budva, whose origins go back to Antiquity: it was a Greek and later a Roman colony, and legend even links it to Cadmus, the mythical founder of Thebes. Archaeological finds —a rich Hellenistic necropolis, jewellery and pottery— confirm more than two and a half thousand years of continuous urban history, placing it among the oldest settlements on the Adriatic.
Under Byzantium, medieval Serbia and, above all, Venice (which ruled it from 1442 to 1797), Budva surrounded itself with the stone walls that still enclose its old town, a maze of narrow streets, churches and squares above the sea. Like the rest of the coast, it then passed into Austrian hands until 1918. An earthquake devastated it in 1979, but the historic centre was rebuilt stone by stone.
In the second half of the 20th century, socialist Yugoslavia turned the Budva coastline into its great sun-and-beach destination. The so-called Budva Riviera —a string of coves and beaches between Bečići, Rafailovići and Petrovac— filled up with hotels and resorts, and the town became the country's summer capital.
Today Budva is the heart of Montenegrin tourism: nightlife, crowded beaches and heavy property pressure that has transformed its character. That model of rapid growth, with its lights and shadows —jobs and foreign currency on one side, speculation and overcrowding on the other—, shapes much of the current debate about the coast.
Few places sum up the coast's recent history better than Sveti Stefan, the islet of pinkish stone joined to the mainland by an isthmus. It was originally a fortified fishing village, built in the 15th century, according to tradition, with the spoils of a local victory over the Ottomans, and organised into clans.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Yugoslav regime expropriated the whole village and turned it into a luxury hotel, a unique "hotel-town" that drew film stars, monarchs and international celebrities. A symbol of Adriatic glamour, it declined after the wars of the 1990s and was leased and restored by a luxury hotel operator. Its silhouette is now Montenegro's most reproduced postcard, although its management is still caught up in legal disputes.
In the far south, next to the Albanian border, Ulcinj has a very different history from the rest of the coast. With Illyrian and Greek roots (ancient Olcinium), it was Venetian until 1571, when the Ottoman Empire conquered it. It stayed under Turkish rule for more than three centuries, until it was handed to Montenegro in 1880 as part of the adjustments that followed the Congress of Berlin.
That long Ottoman period left a deep mark: Ulcinj is today Montenegro's Albanian- and Muslim-majority town, with minarets, mosques and an identity of its own. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was also a notorious nest of Adriatic corsairs and, according to historical accounts, a small slave market; some of those enslaved were North Africans who settled in the area. There is even a tradition —disputed by scholars— that Miguel de Cervantes was held captive by these pirates. South of the town stretches Velika Plaža, the "big beach", the longest strip of sand on the eastern Adriatic.
The Montenegrin coastline is, in miniature, a sampler of the whole Mediterranean: Greeks and Romans in Budva, Venetians in the centre, Ottomans and Albanians in the south. That layering explains its present-day religious and linguistic diversity, with Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim communities living side by side along a few kilometres of coast.
In the 20th century, after joining Yugoslavia in 1918, the whole strip followed the country's fate: socialist tourism, the 1979 earthquake, the wars of the 1990s and, since independence in 2006, a tourism and property boom that has brought foreign investment —notably Russian and Middle Eastern— as well as tensions over the development model. The coast is now Montenegro's economic engine and, at the same time, the stage on which much of its future is being decided.
Cetinje is where modern Montenegro was born. It was founded in 1482 by Ivan Crnojević, who moved his court there to take refuge in the folds of Lovćen from the Ottoman advance, and in 1484 he built its monastery. From then on, and for centuries, this small mountain valley was the country's political and spiritual centre: seat of the Petrović-Njegoš prince-bishops and capital of the theocracy, and later of the principality and the kingdom.
In 1493 the Crnojević printing press was set up in the Cetinje monastery, and in 1494 it produced the Oktoih, one of the first books printed in Cyrillic. The town was razed several times by the Ottomans, but it always rose again. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as capital of King Nikola I's kingdom, it filled up with foreign embassies and legations —a rarity for such a small town—, and many of their buildings still stand.
Although the administrative capital moved to Podgorica in 1946, Cetinje kept the title of historical and spiritual capital, a status recognised even in the Constitution. Here you'll find King Nikola's palace, the old palace of the vladika (Biljarda, named after the billiard table Njegoš had carried up on men's backs), the monastery with its venerated relics and the great national museums.
Above the town rises Mount Lovćen, Montenegro's sacred mountain and a symbol of its identity. On its summit, at more than 1,600 metres, stands the mausoleum of Petar II Petrović Njegoš, the prince-poet, fulfilling his wish to rest looking out over his land. The first mausoleum, from the 19th century, was replaced in 1974 by the current one, the work of Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, not without controversy among those who preferred the original chapel. Lovćen is today a national park and a balcony over the whole country.
In the mountainous interior, wedged almost impossibly into a vertical wall of white rock, stands Ostrog Monastery, Montenegro's biggest pilgrimage site and one of the most important in the entire Orthodox Balkans. It was founded in the 17th century by Vasilije, Bishop of Herzegovina, who took refuge here fleeing the Ottomans and was later canonised as Saint Basil of Ostrog (Sveti Vasilije Ostroški).
His relics, kept in the upper church carved into the rock, draw thousands of pilgrims every year —not only Orthodox, but also Catholics and Muslims— who climb up seeking healing and protection. Ostrog is a remarkable example of the shared folk religion of the Balkans, a place where confessional boundaries blur in the face of faith.
In the fertile valley where several rivers meet, on the ruins of the ancient Roman town of Doclea, grew Podgorica, today the country's capital and largest city. For centuries it was an Ottoman stronghold, until the Congress of Berlin incorporated it into Montenegro in 1878. Its flat, central location, in contrast to mountainous Cetinje, eventually made it the country's administrative engine.
During the Second World War it was heavily bombed. In 1946 it became the capital of the socialist republic, and in 1948 it was renamed Titograd, "Tito's city", a name it kept until 1992, when it went back to Podgorica. Rebuilt first in socialist and then in modern style, it is today a city of bridges, avenues and contemporary buildings, home to the international airport and the country's gateway, though without the historic and monumental weight of Cetinje or Kotor.
In the south of the interior lies Lake Skadar (or Shkodra), the largest lake in the Balkans, shared between Montenegro and Albania. Its waters and wetlands, declared a national park in 1983, are home to one of Europe's largest bird reserves, including a colony of Dalmatian pelicans, as well as native vines such as the vranac grape, which gives the area its traditional wines.
But the lake is also history: on its islands and shores stand medieval monasteries from the days of Zeta, refuges for the Orthodox Church when the coast fell into Venetian or Ottoman hands. Citadels such as the fortress of Žabljak Crnojevića, the short-lived capital of Ivan Crnojević before he founded Cetinje, are a reminder that for centuries these shores were a frontier disputed between Montenegrins, Venetians and Ottomans. Nature and historical memory blend here as in few other places in the country.
Montenegro's mountainous north —the Brda, or "highlands"— was for centuries a world apart, home to semi-autonomous warrior clans such as the Vasojevići, Piperi, Bjelopavlići, Kuči and Drobnjaci. Organised into tribes (plemena) with their own customary law, these highlanders combined transhumant herding with a fiercely independent martial tradition.
During the long resistance against the Ottomans, these highlands worked as a shifting frontier: Turkish in name, but ungovernable in practice. Over the 18th and 19th centuries they gradually joined the core of Old Montenegro around Cetinje, extending the country to the north and east. Their culture of honour, hospitality and blood feud inspired much of Montenegro's national epic.
The Durmitor massif, around the town of Žabljak (the highest settlement in the Balkans), is the heart of Montenegro's mountains. Its more than forty peaks above 2,000 metres, crowned by Bobotov Kuk (2,523 m), and its eighteen glacial lakes —the "mountain eyes", among them the famous Black Lake— were shaped by ancient glaciers.
Declared a national park in 1952 and inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1980, Durmitor is a sanctuary of alpine nature, black pine forests and wildlife. It was also a battlefield: in these mountains Tito's Partisans fought fierce battles during the Second World War, using the terrain for guerrilla warfare. Today it is the country's top destination for hiking, skiing and mountaineering.
Over millennia the Tara River has carved out the deepest canyon in Europe: some 1,300 metres of vertical walls along 78 kilometres, surpassed in the world only by the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Protected within Durmitor National Park and recognised by UNESCO, the Tara is a reserve of pristine water and old-growth forest, and today the mecca of Montenegrin rafting.
Across the canyon stretches the Đurđevića Tara Bridge, an elegant concrete arch bridge opened in 1940. Its history holds a dramatic episode: during the 1942 occupation, one of its own builders, engineer Lazar Jauković, took part in blowing up one of the arches to halt the Axis advance; he was captured and shot by the Italians beside the bridge he had helped to build. The arch was rebuilt after the war, and a plaque commemorates his sacrifice.
Although it lies closer to the coast than to the far north, Mount Lovćen belongs to the same world of highland Montenegro and is, for Montenegrins, the sacred mountain par excellence. Its name, Crna Gora ("black mountain"), gave the whole country its name: its slopes covered in dark forest named an entire nation.
Declared a national park in 1952, Lovćen was the natural bastion of Old Montenegro, the fortress from which Cetinje held out for centuries. On its summit, in a monumental mausoleum, rests the prince-poet Njegoš. Climbing Lovćen means looking out from a viewpoint that, on clear days, takes in almost the entire country: the Bay of Kotor, Lake Skadar, the northern mountains and the Adriatic. It is no coincidence that it is the geographical and spiritual symbol of Montenegrin identity.
After the Second World War, socialist Yugoslavia tried to develop the north through mining, industry and forestry, and towns such as Nikšić and Pljevlja grew up around factories and coal mines. But the mountainous interior remained the poorest and most isolated region of the country.
With the end of socialism and the wars of the 1990s, the north suffered factory closures, unemployment and heavy emigration to the coast and abroad, leaving many villages almost empty. At the same time, its landscapes — Durmitor, Tara, Prokletije, Biogradska Gora — have become the great asset of nature and adventure tourism, seen by many as the only way forward for a spectacular region that is being drained by depopulation. Much of the future of Montenegro's heartland is being played out in that tension between wild beauty and demographic decline.
Hardly anything that happened to Montenegro happened on its own: these are the histories next door.
