Meetings under the Old Olive Tree

Few festivals anywhere have a host like this one: Susreti pod Starom maslinom — Meetings under the Old Olive Tree — takes place beneath the Stara maslina in Mirovica, Bar, an olive tree more than 2,000 years old and among the oldest in the world. The festival, held each early November since 1987, reached its 37th edition on 6–8 November 2024.

The tree itself is a place of quiet pilgrimage year-round: a vast, gnarled trunk within its small protected enclosure among the olive groves of Bar's hinterland, older than the nations and empires that have come and gone around it. In early November, with the harvest under way across the surrounding country, its setting is at its most alive.

It is an international festival of children's creativity: each year a theme is set, and a literary competition draws around a hundred entries from young writers, while art exhibitions display children's work inspired by the same theme. The old tree, which has watched over two millennia of harvests, makes a poetic patron for the youngest imaginations.

The pairing is the festival's genius: the very old and the very young, permanence and beginnings. Generations of children have grown up around these competitions since 1987, and for many local families the festival is a touchstone repeated across decades.

The festival culminates in the crowning of its laureates — a ceremony that has honoured generations of young poets and artists over almost four decades.

Entry is free. Early November is olive-harvest season in Bar, the town's defining agricultural moment, and the festival offers travellers a gentle, meaningful reason to visit the coast's olive country out of season — see the ancient tree, then follow the harvest through the groves around it.