Green Kotor: Trails, Ridges and Easy Escapes from the Old Town

Kotor’s old town measures a few hundred metres across, and on a two-ship day it can feel like all of Montenegro is inside it. The escape is straight up. The mountains rise almost vertically behind the walls, and within twenty minutes of walking the crowd is simply gone.

Key facts

• The terrain is steep. Everything here involves ascent; there are few flat options.
• Water and sun: limited shade, limestone glare, no reliable springs on the climbs. Carry more than you plan to drink.
• Best months: April to June and September to October. Midsummer afternoons are brutal on exposed rock.

The Ladder of Kotor

The old caravan trail that switchbacked up the mountain long before the modern road existed, zigzagging towards the Krstac pass. It is a long, steady, exposed climb on a stone-laid track, and it delivers the classic aerial view of the bay without the ticket queue at the city walls. Start at first light.

Vrmac ridge

The peninsula that separates the inner and outer bays, wooded on its flanks and crowned by a ruined Austro-Hungarian fortress. The trails here are gentler than the Ladder, shadier, and almost empty. Views open on both sides at once.

Lovcen National Park

Behind the ridge, reached by the famous serpentine road with its long series of hairpin bends. Black-pine forest, karst meadows and, at the summit, the mausoleum of the poet-prince Petar II Petrovic-Njegos, approached by a long flight of steps through a tunnel. The view from the platform, on a clear day, takes in a large part of the country.

Njegusi

A small stone village on the Lovcen road, famous nationally for its air-dried prosciutto and cheese. A reasonable lunch stop and the reason half of Montenegro drives up here on a Sunday.

The Skurda canyon and Gurdic spring

Immediately beside the old town, and almost always overlooked. The Skurda river cuts a green cleft along the northern wall; the Gurdic spring surges out from beneath the southern gate, rising and falling dramatically with the rains. Five minutes from the main square and generally deserted.

The bay shore at Dobrota and Prcanj

For flat, easy green, walk the waterfront promenades north and west of town. Stone villas, fig trees, private jetties, cold clear water for swimming and mountains standing straight up on the far side. It is the best sunset walk in the bay and it costs nothing.

Further out

Perast, with its baroque waterfront and the boat out to the man-made island of Our Lady of the Rocks, and beyond it Skadar Lake National Park, the Balkans’ largest lake, wooded, birdy and best seen from a small boat.

Tip: Walk the Ladder of Kotor uphill in the early morning, then descend by the city-walls route into the old town. You get both classic views, the hard climbing is done in shade, and you arrive for breakfast just as the first tour groups are setting off.