"Kotor/Cattaro" a Kotor Travel Page by JLBG

Kotor stands at the southern-east tip of the Gulf of Kotor, at the foot of Mount Lov?en. Along the centuries, it had as much as 14 different rulers and has changed its name several times. The Greek city of Akourion, became Acruvium for the Romans. It became later Decadaron, Catarum, Catera, Cathara. For the Venetians it was Cattaro, which name is still used in Italian and in Venetian dialect, while for Slavs, it is Kotor.

The city walls climb from sea level up to 260 meters above the city (Sveti Ivan/San Djovani hill) and are twice the length of Dubrovnik's walls. They are between two and twenty-five meters thick and at heights of up to twenty meters in some places.

The old town itself was built in a very narrow triangle, between the mountain and two rivers, the Skudra in the north and the Gurdica in the south. It lies mostly on a narrow strip of almost flat land along the sea and on the lowest part of the steep slopes of Mount Lov?en

The city walls were built by the Byzantines and reinforced by the Venetians, which made of Kotor an almost impregnable stronghold. It has three entrances : main entrance, north entrance and south entrance.

In 1572, Kotor was hit by the plague. In 1667 and 1979, the area suffered a severe earthquake. Since 1979, the city of Kotor and its area have been on the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List and the city of Kotor was declared an endangered world monument due to the high seismic risk of the area. Today, thanks to international funding under the UNESCO, Kotor has been almost completely restored. Though it did not suffer from bombings in the 90s, Kotor today still suffers from the indirect consequences of the war, which hit considerably the economy. Tourism was the main income of the area. For a decade, visitors from outside (new) Yugoslavia were few. Only since 2001-2002 did they began to come back in number. One significant indication is that there is still only one guidebook on Montenegro in English, none in French, as far as I know none in Italian and it seems that it is only in German that there are several guide books.!

In the 60s, Kotor had 5,000 inhabitants, in 2003, 24,000.

I want to thank very warmly Jelena (VT Aurorae) who warned me of all the mistakes I had made in this page. I have edited my tips following her advices. She raised a question about Sveti Tripun, which lead me to document more completely several of my tips. Hvala mnogo, Jelena !