In a small area, Montenegro was held in turn by the Illyrians, Byzantium, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Montenegrin state, and all of them built fortifications. The best known are the walls of Kotor with St John's Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Herceg Novi has Kanli Kula, Forte Mare and Španjola, and the Austro-Hungarian Mamula guards the entrance to the bay. Above the sea stand the Citadel in Budva and Haj-Nehaj near Sutomore; on Lake Skadar there are Žabljak Crnojevića, Lesendro, Besac and Grmožur, and inland the Illyrian Medun and the Bedem fortress in Nikšić.
The walls of Kotor and St John's Fortress, Kanli Kula and Forte Mare in Herceg Novi, Mamula at the mouth of the bay, Haj-Nehaj, Žabljak Crnojevića and Medun: a guide to Montenegro's fortresses by region.
The Bay of Kotor: walls and towers above the water
The hilltop above Kotor was already fortified in Illyrian times, and in the 6th century the Byzantine emperor Justinian rebuilt the fortress. The walls of Kotor took their present shape mostly under Venice, from 1420, with later additions by the Austrians. About four and a half kilometres long, they climb more than 260 metres to St John's Fortress. Kotor has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979, and since 2017 also as part of the Venetian Works of Defence.
Herceg Novi has three fortresses within a few hundred metres. Kanli Kula was built by the Turks in 1539; it served as a prison, which gave it its name, meaning bloody tower, and since 1966 it has been a summer stage with more than a thousand seats. Forte Mare guards the town from the sea; it was built between the 14th and 17th centuries and from 1952 also served as an open-air cinema. On Bajer hill above town stands Španjola, begun by the Turks and named after the Spaniards who rebuilt it during their brief rule of the town.
At the mouth of the bay, on the islet of Lastavica, is Mamula, a round fortress built in 1853 by the Austrian general Lazar Mamula together with the forts at Arza and Prevlaka. In the Second World War Italian forces used it as a concentration camp from 1942. Today the island is a hotel resort.
The coast: from Budva to Sutomore
The Citadel at the southern end of Budva's Old Town is first mentioned in 1425, and the town walls begin and end at it. Above Brajići, on the old Budva–Cetinje road, Austria built the Kosmač border fort in the mid-19th century. Near Sutomore, on a rock 231 metres above the sea, stands Haj-Nehaj: a Venetian fortress first mentioned in 1542, taken by the Ottomans in 1571 and by the Montenegrins in 1877. At its top are the remains of the church of St Demetrius, which had two altars.
Did you know?
Prisoners in Kanli Kula carved drawings of ships into the walls. From the type of those ships, which sailed in the 16th and 17th centuries, historians worked out when the fortress became a prison.
Lake Skadar
Where the Morača flows into the lake stands Žabljak Crnojevića, a stronghold founded by the Vojislavljević princes of Zeta and the capital of the Crnojević dynasty in the 15th century. Near Vranjina is Lesendro, an 18th-century fort from the time of Petar II Petrović Njegoš; the Ottomans took it in 1843 and Montenegro regained it in 1878. Above Virpazar is Besac, built by the Turks in the late 15th century, and on an islet in the lake lies Grmožur, a former Turkish fort and prison known as Montenegro's Alcatraz, which you reach by boat.
Inland
About 13 kilometres north-east of Podgorica is Medun, the Illyrian town of Meteon from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, with walls of huge stone blocks; the birth house of Marko Miljanov, now a museum, is also here. In Nikšić stands Bedem, the remains of a 4th-century Roman fort, 213 metres long, rebuilt by the Turks in the early 18th century. In summer its walls host the concerts of Bedem Fest.
