Kotor - The Boka

The Bay of Kotor is a drowned river canyon that reaches inland from the Adriatic through a narrow channel at Verige, then widens into four interconnected basins behind. The walled Old Town sits at the innermost point of the innermost basin, where the karst mountains press directly to the waterfront and the fortification walls climb the cliff face to St. John's Fortress at 260 metres. Kotor has been Illyrian, Roman, Byzantine, Serbian, Venetian, and Habsburg. The Venetian period, which ran from 1420 to 1797, left the walls, the loggia, the campanile, and the street network the city still uses.

The Old Town is entirely pedestrian. Three cathedrals and several smaller churches occupy the same few blocks as the market square and the clock tower. The Boka Kotorska, the full bay system, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979, a designation covering the fortifications, the surrounding mountains, and the older noble houses that line the coastal road north toward Dobrota, built by the maritime families who ran trading fleets across the Adriatic in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Where to stay

Boutique Hotel Astoria occupies the 13th-century Buca Palace inside the walls, a UNESCO-protected building whose ground-floor bistro spills onto the main square. Boutique Hotel Hippocampus is housed in a 17th-century building and serves breakfast on a rooftop terrace with local charcuterie, Montenegrin pastry, and views over the old town roofscape. Outside the walls, Hotel Cattaro decorates around the maritime heritage of the bay and has a rooftop terrace that looks across the water to the mountains on the far shore.

What to eat

The dominant cuisine of the bay is Adriatic seafood, caught daily from small vessels working the channel and served with minimal treatment. Galion, at the harbour just north of the old town walls, occupies a glass-fronted room built on stilts over the water and runs a menu of grilled fish, squid, and bay oysters. Cesarica, down a quiet cobbled lane inside the walls, is the family-run room for candlelit evenings and straightforward Adriatic cooking in a cave-like brick interior. Tanjga serves the Montenegrin interior, marinated meat from the grill, cevapi, Sopska salad, the food of the mountains rather than the bay, and a reminder that the coast and the hinterland here operate on different culinary registers.

Where to drink

Bokun Wine Bar in the old town focuses on wines from Montenegro and the wider Balkans, with the Vranac grape, a dark tannic red grown in the Crmnica valley south of the bay, the strongest local argument on the list. The pairing with Montenegrin prsut, the air-dried prosciutto from the mountain villages above Njeguši, is as place-specific as a glass of wine gets. Jazz Club Evergreen hosts live music through the summer season in a room hung with instruments and memorabilia, mixing local and international players. On the waterfront promenade outside the walls, Café de Sade is the late-evening cocktail stop with the best sightlines back to the illuminated fortifications.

The climb

The staircase from the old town's northern gate to St. John's Fortress involves 1,350 steps cut into the cliff face, a medieval construction that was the working access route to the upper fortifications. It takes forty minutes each way and is busy in summer mornings. From the fortress the full extent of the Boka becomes legible, the outer basins opening toward the Adriatic, the two island churches of Perast sitting in the water to the north, the limestone ranges closing everything in from above. The bay is the reason the city was built at this particular point, and from elevation it becomes possible to read how completely the geography determined everything that followed.