Climbing Kotor's City Walls at Sunset

Kotor is a medieval walled city at the southeastern end of the Bay of Kotor — sometimes called Europe's southernmost fjord, though it is technically a submerged river canyon. The city walls were built by the Venetians from the 9th century onward and climb the sheer limestone cliffs behind the town to the ruins of San Giovanni Fortress at 280 metres above sea level. The climb takes 45 minutes to an hour and involves approximately 1,350 steps cut into the rock, with the bay growing larger and more impossibly blue with every pause to catch your breath.

The descent is, if anything, more spectacular than the ascent. In the last hour of daylight, the light on the bay turns amber, the mountains of Bosnia and Croatia across the water purple in shadow, and the medieval town below arranges itself like a miniature — the Cathedral of Saint Tryphon, the sea gate, the tightly packed rooftops of a city that has been continuously inhabited since the 7th century. The entrance fee to the walls is small. The experience is large.

Montenegro is one of Europe's least-visited countries, which is to say it is visited by about a million tourists a year (mostly Serbs and Russians), which in practical terms means that Kotor in July and August is genuinely crowded. Come in May or September when the temperatures are warm but the cruise ships are fewer and the old town recovers some of its dignity. The national park of Lovcen above the city, the Our Lady of the Rocks island church in Perast, and the Ostrog Monastery carved into a cliff are all worth the extra days.