Kotor
Montenegro
A walled Venetian town at the head of a fjord that is not a fjord, under 1,200 metres of rock
Photo by olga brajnovic on Unsplash
Photos by Vladan Raznatovic, Secret Travel Guide, Dragisa Braunovic and Linda Gerbec on Unsplash
Best time to visit all of Montenegro
May to September (July and August are hot and full of cruise ships)
Climate month by month
The next sixteen daysOpen-Meteo
Average high and low · °C
Rainfall · mm per month
Best months to visit This month · wettest 290mm in Nov
Where it is
42.42°N, 18.77°E Open in Google Maps
Things to do
A week easily- Climb the walls to San Giovanni at seven in the morning
- Take a boat to Our Lady of the Rocks, an island the town built by hand
- Drive the Lovćen road up to Njeguši and stop for ham
- Swim off the rocks at Perast rather than on a Budva beach
- Go north to the Tara canyon, which is the deepest in Europe
Kotor travel tipsthe general rules
Currency budget Montenegro
Good valueMontenegro uses the euro without being in the eurozone, which surprises people — it adopted it unilaterally. Cards are taken in the towns and much less so in the mountains, where cash is the rule.
ATMs & cards
CKB, NLB and Erste machines are in Kotor, Budva and Tivat. Several charge a fee of three to five euros to foreign cards, which is high — CKB is usually the cheapest.
Avoid these
- machines charging five euros a withdrawal, which several here do
Use these instead
- CKB
- NLB Banka
- Erste Bank
Montenegro uses the euro without being in the eurozone. Fees to foreign cards are high by European standards — CKB is usually the cheapest — so take one larger withdrawal.
Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.
Safety all of Montenegro
SafeVery safe, with almost no crime against visitors. The dangers are the roads — the Lovćen serpentines have twenty-five hairpins and no barrier — and the walls, where the steps are worn smooth and there is no railing on the drop side. Do the climb early: there is no shade and no water.
Where to walk, and where to pay attention (9 areas)
Comfortable, including after dark
Worth more attention
- Kotor City Walls — the 1,350 steps, worn smooth, with no railing on the drop side and no shade
- Lovćen — the serpentine road, twenty-five hairpins with no barrier
- Budva — the beach strip at closing time in August
- Swimming off the rocks where the bay is deep straight down and there are no lifeguards
Our own assessment, not a sourced index.
Entry & visa Montenegro visa rules
No visa neededup to 90 days
Ninety days in a hundred and eighty. Montenegro is not in the EU or Schengen but applies a comparable rule, and holders of a valid Schengen visa may also enter.
Other passports
Visa required in advance
How to get it: Foreign visitors must be registered with the police within 24 hours of arrival. A hotel or a licensed rental does this for you — confirm that yours will, because doing it yourself means a queue at a police station.
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, not where you live — the official page above is the authority, and the airline checks before you board.
Health & emergencies all of Montenegro
Good but costlyRequired to enter
No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.
Jabs worth having, and what happens if you need a doctor
Worth having
- Hepatitis A
- Tetanus up to date
- Tick-borne encephalitis for hiking in Durmitor
Getting treated
Adequate on the coast, thin inland. Kotor and Podgorica have hospitals; anything serious is usually referred to Belgrade or flown out. Private clinics in Budva and Tivat are used to treating visitors and take cash or insurance.
Tap water is safe in the towns. Ticks in the northern mountains. The most common injury is a fall on the Kotor walls or a road accident on the serpentines, and the mountain rescue capability is limited.
Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.
Food tip
Very goodThe bay does Adriatic seafood — buzara, black risotto, grilled fish by the kilo — and the mountains behind it do smoked ham, kajmak and lamb under a sač. Njeguški pršut, cured in the village at the top of the Lovćen road, is the thing to stop for.
Nightlife
Stone squares full of terraces, a cruise crowd that leaves at six, and Budva half an hour away doing something considerably louder.
- Kotor Old Town — the squares, and the bars in them
- Budva — the clubs, and the summer strip
- Porto Montenegro — the marina, and the expensive version
Closing: 01:00 in Kotor, which is residential and policed for noise; 04:00 in Budva.
A beer in a bar: €2.50–4
Getting around
Workable- CarGoWorks here
- UberNot here
- BoltNot here
- Against a taxi
- Cheaper, but supply is thin outside Podgorica and the coast in season.
Uber and Bolt do not operate here. Agree a price before setting off, which is the local habit.
Time zone and your working day
Europe/Podgorica — 6 hours ahead of you
2 hours of overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are — 09:00–11:00 your time, 15:00–17:00 theirs.
No overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are. Working from here means one of you keeps odd hours — their day starts at 03:00 on your clock.
office hours both at once night
Their 09:00–17:00 is 03:00–11:00 on yours.
The difference from the UK, Europe, the US and ten more
Worked out against America/New York, which is where this request looks like it came from.
Internet speedall of Montenegro
Ookla publishes no mobile median for Montenegro, so there is no figure here for what a phone gets.
Why these are Montenegro's numbers and not Kotor's
Home broadband — Fair. Video calls and streaming for one or two people — fine for a holiday, thin for a household working. Broadband here runs at 70% of the global median of 130 Mbps.
Ookla publishes no separate figure for Kotor, so these are medians for all of Montenegro. Cities usually beat the national number and remote islands and national parks fall well below it — treat this as the country's shape, not as a measurement of the street you will be staying on.
A median is the middle of every connection tested there, old copper and new fibre together — so in a country part-way through laying fibre it sits well below what a fibre line actually delivers, and a rental on one can run several times this number. Half of the connections are slower; a fibre flat is rarely one of them. It says what a place can do, not what your rental does, so every listing on Holistay carries its own measured speed and the date it was tested.
Getting online: Airalo or Holafly — a data eSIM for Montenegro, installed before you fly and working the moment you land.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured June 2026
Must-see
Nearby day trips
Say a few words
Montenegrin
- HelloZdravoZDRA-vo
- Good dayDobar danDO-bar dahn
- PleaseMolimMO-leem
- Thank youHvalaHVA-la
5 more phrases
- Yes / NoDa / Neda / neh
- Excuse meIzviniteiz-VEE-ni-teh
- How much is it?Koliko košta?KO-li-ko KOSH-ta
- CheersŽivjeliZHEEV-yeh-lee
- Slowly, take it easyPolakopo-LA-ko
Mutually intelligible with Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, and written in both Latin and Cyrillic — signs use both. English is widely spoken on the coast, less so inland.
Religion
Serbian Orthodox, with Catholic and Muslim minorities
Around three quarters Orthodox, with a Catholic community around Kotor from the Venetian centuries and Muslims in the north-east. Church ownership has been a live political dispute rather than a historical one — worth knowing before raising it.
Do's and don'ts
Do
- Accept the rakija you are offered, or at least touch the glass to your lips
- Cover shoulders and knees at the Orthodox monasteries, and take a hat off
- Say dobar dan, and expect a slow answer — the pace here is deliberate and is called polako
- Bring something if you are invited to a house: coffee, sweets, or a bottle
Don't
- Do not rush a coffee, which is a two-hour institution rather than a drink
- Do not photograph inside a monastery or during a service
- Do not raise the Serbia-Montenegro question casually, which is live politics rather than history
- Do not swim or sunbathe in front of a church or in a village square
Where to stay in Kotor
No Holistay rentals in Kotor yet — the platform is just opening up. Every listing here will have a video tour and the option to negotiate the nightly price directly with the host.
In the meantime, here is Kotor on the sites that do have the inventory — each search is already filled in:
- Booking.com hotels, guesthouses and apartments — the widest coverage almost everywhere
- Airbnb whole homes and apartments, and the better option for a week or more
How to get there
Fly into Tivat TIV
15 minfrom the airport· 4 km as the crow flies
15 min round the bay.
Also worth pricing: Dubrovnik, Croatia DBV — two hours and a border, but far more flights.
Google Flights · Rome2Rio for the trains, buses and ferries as well as the flights
