Budva and the coast

Budva Old Town in Forty Minutes

Budva's old town is small enough to walk across in four minutes and old enough to have been doing this for two and a half thousand years. Much of what you see is younger than that, for a reason.

Updated · 2 min read

The earthquake

On 15 April 1979 an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 hit the Montenegrin coast. It killed around a hundred people and flattened much of Budva's old town — walls, houses, churches. What stands today was rebuilt through the 1980s, stone by stone, from surveys and photographs.

It was done well and most visitors never realise. Once you know, you start noticing: the mortar is too even in places, the stone too uniform, the corners too crisp. The churches and the citadel walls kept more original fabric than the houses did.

The forty minutes

  • In through the main gate from the marina side. One street straight ahead, and it is the busy one.
  • Turn off it immediately. The parallel lanes to the left and right are where the town is pleasant rather than commercial.
  • The three churches cluster together at the southern end: St John's with the campanile, Holy Trinity with the mosaic, and Santa Maria in Punta, which dates to 840.
  • The Citadel, €3.50 – €5, for the walls, the small maritime library and the view along the coast.
  • Out onto the sea wall and around the outside, which is the best view of the town and free.

The citadel

Not large, and the ticket is cheap. What you are paying for is the terrace on the seaward wall, the small museum with a room of old maritime books and instruments, and being above the crowd for twenty minutes. Go at the end of the day; the light off the sea comes straight at you.

What is underneath

The Archaeological Museum on Petra I Petrovića holds what the earthquake exposed. When they dug the foundations for the reconstruction they found Greek and Roman graves under the town, and the jewellery from them — Hellenistic gold, a Greek helmet — is the best thing in Budva and one of the least visited. €3.

Timing

The old town is at its worst between eleven and four in August, when it is a slow shuffle. It is at its best at eight in the morning, when the deliveries are happening and the stone is still cool, and again after ten at night when the day visitors have gone and the bars in the squares fill up.

Anyone sleeping inside the walls should know that those bars run until three, and the sound goes straight up between the buildings.

Where it sits

Mogren beach is a ten-minute walk along a cliff path from the western wall — cut into the rock, and worth doing for the walk as much as the beach. Slovenska plaža and the promenade run the other way. Parking is outside the walls and fills early.

Book locally

Run by a licensed operator in Žabljak. Send a request, pay the operator on the day.

Tara Rafting 14 km — Durmitor National ParkRafting · ŽabljakTara Rafting 14 km — Durmitor National ParkThe shortest Tara section Tara Kula runs: a half day on the river inside Durmitor National Park, passing under the Đurđevića Tara bridge.from €60 Jeep Safari — Tara Canyon ViewpointsJeep safari · ŽabljakJeep Safari — Tara Canyon ViewpointsA short off-road loop to look down into the canyon, with a monastery and a spring on the way.from €60 Green Zip Line at the Tara BridgeZip line · ŽabljakGreen Zip Line at the Tara BridgeNinety seconds over the canyon on a 740 m line next to the Đurđevića Tara bridge.from €45

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