Kotor is one of the most astonishing sights on the Adriatic: a medieval stone town tucked in at the far end of the Bay of Kotor, between mountains that drop sheer into a deep blue sea. Its walls —almost 4,5 km of Venetian fortifications— don't just ring the old town, they climb the slopes of Mount San Giovanni up to a fortress 260 metres above the sea, tracing one of the most recognisable outlines in Europe. For almost four centuries it was Cattaro, a city of the Republic of Venice, and the whole ensemble has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
The headline activity is climbing up the walls to St John's Fortress (Sveti Ivan): about 1.350 steps up, with ever wider views over the red rooftops of the old town, the horseshoe-shaped bay and the cruise ships anchored below. Inside the walls, a maze of lanes and little marble squares hides the Romanesque St Tryphon's Cathedral (from 1166), the Orthodox churches of St Luke and St Nicholas, the Maritime Museum and dozens of cafés and Venetian palaces. Outside, the bay invites you to take a boat to Perast and the tiny island of Our Lady of the Rocks.
This guide covers Kotor with a practical, honest eye: how to get there (via Tivat, by bus along the coast or by ferry across the mouth of the bay), what climbing to the fortress really costs, how to dodge the midday cruise crowds, what to see beyond the walls and how to use Kotor as a base for discovering the whole Boka Kotorska and inland Montenegro. A small town, but with a genuinely fascinating history, shaped by Venice, earthquakes and a centuries-old bond with the sea.
Kotor grew out of an Illyrian and Roman settlement called Acruvium, at the far end of the bay. In the Middle Ages it was an autonomous city under Byzantium and then, between 1186 and 1371, part of the medieval Serbian kingdom, when it enjoyed a golden age of trade and culture. After brief spells of independence and Hungarian rule, in 1420 it placed itself under the Republic of Venice, which ruled it as Cattaro for almost four centuries (until 1797) and built most of the walls, churches and palaces we see today. It withstood Ottoman sieges (1538, 1657) and survived devastating earthquakes, above all the one in 1667. After the fall of Venice it passed to Austria, then through a brief Napoleonic occupation and back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until it became part of Yugoslavia after the First World War. On 15 April 1979 a powerful earthquake badly damaged the old town and St Tryphon's Cathedral; that same year UNESCO inscribed Kotor and its bay on the World Heritage List and on the List of World Heritage in Danger, which it left in 2003 after an exemplary restoration. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Montenegro's Mediterranean fjord: centuries of Venetian rule, walled stone towns and a seafaring tradition that left behind captains, Baroque palaces and legends by the sea.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kotor was born where the mountain plunges into the sea. In the deepest corner of the Bay of Kotor, sheltered by rock walls more than a thousand metres high, there were human settlements from very ancient times. The summit of St John's Hill (Sveti Ivan), now crowned by the fortress, was already fortified in Illyrian times, when these shores were ruled by tribes such as the Enchelei and, later, by the Illyrian kingdom that Rome would eventually subdue. The Illyrians of the region were skilled sailors and, according to ancient sources, feared pirates of the Adriatic, a reputation helped by the hidden inlets of the Boka.
The Romans brought the area into the province of Dalmatia and founded, or refounded, a town here called Acruvium (sometimes Ascrivium), mentioned by ancient geographers such as Pliny the Elder. Set at a strategic spot at the head of the bay, a good natural shelter for ships, the Roman town was the seed of later Kotor. When the Empire split, this coast fell within the orbit of the Byzantine Empire, and the bay, hard to attack and easy to defend, became established as a stronghold. Few visible remains survive from those centuries, but the logic of the place was already set: a city hugging the water, guarded by walls climbing the mountain, living from the sea.
In the early Middle Ages, Kotor was a maritime city that knew how to manoeuvre between powers. In the 9th and 10th centuries it appears as a self-governing community under the nominal sovereignty of Byzantium, with its own bishop and an increasingly busy commercial life. The city traded with the Italian republics, with Dubrovnik (Ragusa), its eternal rival and neighbour, and with the Balkan interior, which supplied silver, wax, hides and other goods that it re-exported by sea.
Between 1186 and 1371, Kotor was part of the medieval Serbian kingdom of the Nemanjić dynasty, and that period was one of the most brilliant in its history. Under kings such as Stefan Nemanja and his successors, the city kept broad freedoms, its own statute and its own administration, in exchange for loyalty and for serving as the Serbian state's main outlet to the sea. Trade, goldsmithing and building flourished: from this era comes the consecration, in 1166, of the Romanesque Cathedral of St Tryphon, dedicated to the saint whose relics the city had venerated since the 9th century and who became its patron and symbol. Kotor minted coins, had notaries and written statutes, and its fleet kept growing. After the Serbian Empire broke up, the city passed through the hands of Bosnian and Hungarian nobles and through brief periods of independence, always looking for the protector that would best guarantee its trade and its freedom. That balance would eventually tip towards a maritime power with which Kotor shared a culture and a horizon: Venice.
In 1420, threatened by the Ottomans and by its neighbours, the city voluntarily handed itself over to the Republic of Venice, which would rule it, under the Italian name of Cattaro, until 1797, almost four centuries. This was the period that gave Kotor its present face. Venice made the city part of its province of Venetian Albania and turned it into a first-class stronghold against the Turkish advance. Venetian engineers built and strengthened most of the fortifications we admire today: the nearly 4.5 km of walls that ring the old town and climb up to St John's Fortress, the monumental gates and the bastions. Above the Sea Gate and on many buildings you can see the winged lion of St Mark, emblem of the Serenissima.
Under Venice, Kotor and the whole bay enjoyed a maritime golden age. Noble families built the carved-stone palaces that fill the old town (the Drago, Pima, Bizanti and Grgurina), and shipping and trade thrived. The Boka Kotorska built up one of the most important merchant fleets in the Adriatic, with captains and shipowners from Kotor, Perast, Dobrota and Prčanj sailing all over the Mediterranean; its ancient seafarers' brotherhood, the Bokeljska mornarica, with more than twelve centuries of tradition, is still a symbol of local identity today. It was also a hard time: the Ottomans, masters of almost all the interior, besieged Cattaro in 1538 and again in 1657 without managing to take it; plague struck in 1572; and above all the earthquake of 1667, the same one that devastated Dubrovnik, caused enormous damage and forced much of the city to be rebuilt, including the bell towers of St Tryphon, redone in Baroque style and slightly asymmetrical. Despite everything, Cattaro held out, loyal to Venice until the end of the Republic.
The fall of Venice to Napoleon in 1797 opened a century of upheaval. Under the Treaty of Campo Formio, Kotor and the bay first passed to the Austrian Empire; then, during the Napoleonic Wars, the area changed hands several times: there was a brief Russian and Montenegrin occupation (1806-1807), backed by Admiral Senyavin's fleet and by the Montenegrins of Prince-Bishop Petar I, followed by French control within the Illyrian Provinces. After Napoleon's final defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 awarded Kotor and the whole Boka to the Austrian Empire, as part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia.
Under Austria-Hungary, which ruled it for a century (1815-1918), the bay was an important naval base. The Austrians modernised some of the defences, and Kotor (Cattaro to them as well) remained a military and commercial port. In February 1918, in the last months of the First World War, the bay was the scene of the Cattaro mutiny, a revolt by Austro-Hungarian sailors, fed up with war and hunger, who went as far as raising red flags on their ships before being put down, with some of their leaders executed. Once the war was over and the Austro-Hungarian Empire broken up, Kotor and Montenegro became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would become Yugoslavia. During the Second World War, the city was annexed by Fascist Italy (which laid claim to the old Cattaro) and lived through occupation and partisan resistance until its liberation in 1944, commemorated on a plaque above the Sea Gate.
The most recent and traumatic blow came, once again, from the earth. On the morning of 15 April 1979, a violent earthquake of magnitude close to 7 shook the entire Montenegrin coast. In Kotor, the quake badly damaged the old town: many buildings collapsed or were severely affected, and the Cathedral of St Tryphon suffered serious damage. Across the region around a hundred people died and thousands of buildings were left unusable. A heritage built up over centuries, which had survived sieges and earlier earthquakes, was suddenly at risk.
The response was remarkable. That same year, 1979, UNESCO inscribed the 'Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor' on the World Heritage List and, at the same time, on the List of World Heritage in Danger, to rally international aid. A long, meticulous restoration of the walls, churches, palaces and squares began, giving the city back its splendour. In 2003, after decades of work, Kotor was finally removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger. In 2017, its fortifications were also recognised as part of the transnational site 'Venetian Works of Defence between the 15th and 17th Centuries', which brings together the great strongholds of the Serenissima.
Today Kotor is, together with Dubrovnik, one of the jewels of the eastern Adriatic and one of the most visited places in Montenegro, which became independent from Serbia in 2006. Its port receives large cruise ships and its old town fills up in summer, with all the overcrowding that brings. But you only need to get up early, climb to St John's Fortress at dawn or wander its stone alleys at night, watched over by the city's famous cats, to find the Kotor of old again: a small seafaring town that, wedged between mountain and sea, has been gazing at its bay for more than two thousand years.
