Kotor Old Town

Kotor Old Town is one of the best-preserved medieval urban nuclei in the Mediterranean, its stone streets and squares laid out under Venetian rule between the 13th and 18th centuries, enclosed by fortifications that climb the steep slopes behind the city and are still intact to their full height.

The main gate, Gornja Korita, opens onto a network of narrow lanes and stone-paved passages opening into small piazzas where Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, their facades softened by age into warm ochre and terracotta tones that are particularly beautiful in the morning light before the crowds arrive.

The 1,350-metre city walls, substantially rebuilt and reinforced by the Venetians after the 1657 Ottoman siege, incorporate earlier Byzantine fabric and still stand to their full height, enclosing the old city in near-original form, their stone stairways leading upward to the fortress of Saint Ivan at the top of the ridge.

Above the rooftops, the mountain wall curves upward along a stone stairway to the fortress of St Ivan, from which the entire deep-water bay is visible, the surrounding limestone peaks reflected in the still blue water below, the view encompassing the full horseshoe of the Boka Kotorska inlet with the mountains of the Dalmatian coast on the horizon.

Cats are a living feature of Kotor, found dozing in window openings and narrow alleys throughout the old town, part of a local culture that has incorporated them into the city identity for generations and that treats them as informal guardians of the medieval stone.

The northern Adriatic climate brings warm, dry summers and mild, humid winters, with the mountain walls funnelling cool air down into the streets in summer and sheltering the harbour from the worst of the winter bora wind, making the old town comfortable to walk in even at the height of July.

The Cathedral of Saint Tryphon (Sveti Tripun), a Romanesque-Gothic building dating from the 12th century, stands at the main square and houses important religious art and relics, its twin bell towers visible from most points in the old town and acting as the spiritual and visual centre of the medieval city.

A walk through the old town in the early morning, before the cruise-ship passengers arrive, reveals a quiet residential neighbourhood where laundry hangs from stone balconies, cats patrol the doorways and the smell of coffee drifts from small cafes on the corner squares.

The medieval urban fabric is essentially unaltered, with a complete circuit of Venetian walls and a townscape that layers Byzantine, Venetian and Habsburg periods.

The walls are climbable to the fortress of St Ivan, offering one of the most dramatic viewpoint walks in the Balkans for a modest physical effort.

Kotor sits on a deep-water bay surrounded by mountains, giving it an intimate fjord-like setting that is unique in the Mediterranean.