Kotor walls and St John's FortressThe climb to San Giovanni

You are standing at the main entrance to the walls. This spot is called Parilo, and behind you is the church of Saint Mary Collegiate, where Blessed Osanna rests. This is the first ticket gate. The second gate is in the south of the town, behind Saint Tryphon's Cathedral, at a spot the municipality calls Škaljari Square. Both paths climb the hill and meet below the church of Our Lady of Remedy, a third of the way up. We start here, and you can come down either way. Look up at the cliff. Kotor's walls have two parts. One encloses the town along the sea and along the river Škurda. The other climbs Saint John's hill in a zigzag, up to the fortress at the top. Together they are about four and a half kilometres long. The Municipality of Kotor says that ticket money goes to maintaining and repairing the walls and the paths. Keep your ticket until you leave. If you haven't already, fill your bottle at the fountain by the entrance. There is no water further up.

Stop at the bend and look down. The north wall runs down to the river Škurda, and the river runs into the sea. The ancient writers Livy, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy mention a town called Acruvium on this spot, or somewhere close. From the seventh century the town is called Dekaderon and Decatarum, and the name Kotor comes from that. Written sources speak of an upper town and a lower town. The upper town is the oldest part of the settlement, on top of Saint John's hill, where you are heading. The lower town was down here, by the sea. It was laid waste by the Saracens in eight forty-one, and at the end of the tenth century by the army of Tsar Samuel. Traces from the Illyrian period have been found at the very top of the hill. In the sixth century the Byzantine emperor Justinian rebuilt the fort up there. No one knows when the first stone of the walls was laid. They grew with the town, century by century, and work on the upper part went on until the nineteenth century. When you reach the top, you will be standing where Kotor's story began.

Along these steps stand small votive chapels. The Kotor Tourist Board writes that there are five of them, and that this stairway with its chapels is the way to the church of Our Lady of Remedy. A vow is a promise made to God in a time of trouble, and kept once the trouble has passed. Kotor had no shortage of trouble. The plague struck the town in fifteen seventy-two as well. Earthquakes almost destroyed it in fifteen sixty-three and in sixteen sixty-seven. The church you are heading to was itself built as a vow, after one of the plague epidemics. Stop by a chapel and rest your legs. Look towards the bay. Down below is the harbour where the cruise ships dock. Across the water is the hill of Vrmac, which closes Kotor off to the south-west. From here you can also see why the town stands exactly here. The sea on one side, the river on the other, and the cliff at its back. The walls only had to close what nature had left open.

This is the church of Our Lady of Remedy, built in fifteen eighteen. You have climbed about a third of the way. In fourteen twenty Kotor came under the Republic of Venice, and it stayed Venetian for almost four centuries, until seventeen ninety-seven. From the fifteenth century it was a frontier town, under constant threat of Ottoman attack. This was exactly when gunpowder changed warfare. Tall, thin walls could not stand up to cannon. So the Venetians strengthened the walls, made them thicker, and added bastions, from which defenders could also fire at the attackers from the side. Most of what you see today was built by Venice. The town needed it. In sixteen fifty-seven an Ottoman army besieged Kotor, but failed to take it. In twenty seventeen UNESCO added the Venetian works of defence to the World Heritage List. They are shared by Italy, Croatia and Montenegro: six fortified sites spread over more than a thousand kilometres, from Bergamo to Kotor. Kotor is the southernmost. If you have had enough, this is an easy place to turn back. Further on, the path gets steeper.

Here the path comes out onto the wall itself. See how the wall follows the edge of the rock, up towards the fortress. On the fifteenth of April, nineteen seventy-nine, at nineteen minutes past seven in the morning, an earthquake of magnitude six point nine struck the Montenegrin coast. It was the most destructive earthquake in Montenegro in the twentieth century. In Kotor, churches and the town walls were badly damaged. The town was restored, largely with UNESCO's help. But most of the work was done down in the town. The walls on the hill had been left without a garrison back in nineteen eighteen, when the Austrian army left. Since then nobody had looked after them regularly. Rain, roots and earthquakes did the rest. In two thousand and one, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, ICOMOS, called for the fortress to be restored and brought back to life. So take care. Don't climb on the walls and don't leave the path. Stone that looks solid can come loose.

Turn towards the mountain behind the wall. These are the slopes of Lovćen. Up there, beyond the rocks, is Njeguši, and further on Cetinje, Montenegro's old royal capital. For centuries Kotor belonged to one world and the mountain above it to another. Down here Venice, then Austria, and up there Montenegro. For Montenegrins, Kotor was the most important market and the only way in from the outside world. For whoever ruled Kotor, the mountain was a frontier to be guarded. Austria ruled Kotor from eighteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen and turned the Bay of Kotor into a major naval base. Look down the bay. On the first of February nineteen eighteen, aboard the ships of the Austro-Hungarian fleet anchored in the bay, sailors raised red flags and demanded an end to the war. About thirty ships joined the mutiny. It was over after three days, and four sailors were executed. From here the fortress is about ten more minutes.

Look at the wall on your left. It has gunports, openings through which the defenders fired their cannon. For years people climbed into the walls through one of these openings from the other side, from the old path, without a ticket, using makeshift ladders. People called it the window. In May twenty twenty-six the Municipality of Kotor walled up the two gunports that were used most as an unofficial way in, at the positions called Renijer and Batalja. The openings are five metres or more above the ground, and several people had been injured there. They were closed with stone and lime mortar. The municipality says this is temporary and can be removed without harming the walls. So don't try to squeeze through or climb. Behind the wall is the hamlet of Špiljari, with the small church of Saint George and ruined houses. The old path to Njeguši runs past it, the one known today as the Ladder of Kotor. From the plain of Njeguši it came down over the Krstac pass, in switchbacks, into the Škurda canyon and on to Špiljari. It was a path for people on foot and on horseback. Today you reach the Ladder only from below, from the North Gate. We will tell you how at the end of the tour.

You are at the top, about two hundred and sixty metres above the sea. This was the command centre of Kotor's defence. The Kotor Tourist Board writes that it held artillery positions, armouries and quarters for the garrison. In the autumn of eighteen thirteen a French garrison shut itself up in the fortress. Montenegrin troops of Prince-Bishop Petar the First surrounded Kotor by land, and British ships under Captain William Hoste closed it from the sea. Early in eighteen fourteen the French surrendered. Hoste handed the town to a Montenegrin commission, and for a short time Kotor was under Montenegrin rule. The Congress of Vienna then gave it to Austria. Look down. From here you see best the town's triangle between the sea, the river and the rock, and how small the town is and how long the walls are. It is easy to picture a lookout here, following every ship in the bay. Rest and drink some water. Going down is harder on the knees than coming up, and the steps are most slippery on the way down. Go slowly, step sideways if it helps, and hold on to the wall where you can.

You have come down to the south exit, behind Saint Tryphon's Cathedral. This is the second ticket gate. The walls have a new role today. Between April and August of twenty nineteen alone, almost a hundred thousand people climbed them. For a long time the ticket was eight euros, and since November twenty twenty-three it has been fifteen. The money, the municipality says, goes to maintaining the walls and the paths. For centuries armies built and guarded these walls. Today the ticket does. If you still have the energy and the time, walk north through the town, about four hundred metres, to the North Gate. Beyond it, across the bridge over the Škurda, the old path to Njeguši begins: the Ladder of Kotor. If you are done for today, find some shade on one of the squares. The town below the walls has its own audio walk, which starts at the Sea Gate.

Here, in front of the north walls, the old path from the mountain ended. The flat ground outside the walls was called the Montenegrin Market. This is where the highlanders brought their goods to Kotor's market. The path was narrow, for people on foot and on horseback, but until the second half of the nineteenth century it was the main link between the Montenegrin hinterland and the sea. Then the engineer Josip Slade designed a carriage road. The section from Kotor, with its famous twenty-five hairpin bends, was finished in eighteen eighty-four. Today the old path is a marked hiking trail. To the Krstac pass it is about five kilometres, with more than a thousand metres of ascent, about four and a half hours one way. There is little shade and no reliable water on the way. You don't have to go to the top. Climb to the first bends above Špiljari, look at the walls and the fortress from the side the attackers saw, and come back the same way. You will find the map and description on our website, under Ladder of Kotor.