Petrovac Beach

Sand · 600 m · Budva

Photo: Ad Meskens You are free to use this picture for any purpose as long... · CC BY-SA 4.0

Length: 600 m
Type: Sand
Water: Good
Crowds: High

Petrovac beach is the 600 m town beach of Petrovac, a small coastal town in the municipality of Budva, 18 km south of Budva on the road to Bar. Reddish sand runs the length of the promenade, with the stone houses of the town behind it, and the islets Katič and Sveta Nedjelja lie a few hundred metres offshore; the sea between them and the shore is a protected nature reserve. Petrovac is quieter than Budva and reached from it by an hourly city bus that runs all year.

Two small rocky islets, one wooded and one with a chapel, on a sparkling sea — The islets of Katič and Sveta Nedjelja off PetrovacPhoto: Zlatomir Bacic, CC BY-SA 3.0

Getting there

Petrovac lies on the Adriatic highway between Budva and Bar, and the beach is the town front, a few minutes on foot from anywhere in the settlement. The Budva-Petrovac city line is the southern end of Budva's bus network: it leaves Budva about every hour from 06:10 to 23:10, via Bečići, Kamenovo, Pržno, Sveti Stefan, Reževići and Perazića Do, and returns from Petrovac between 06:50 and 00:10, all year round. More on buses in Montenegro.

By car, without traffic: Budva 18 km (about 30 minutes), Sveti Stefan 11 km (about 20 minutes), Sutomore 14 km (about 20 minutes), Bar 27 km (about 40 minutes), Tivat Airport 40 km (about 55 minutes), Podgorica Airport 48 km and Podgorica 55 km (about an hour each). The tourist information point in Petrovac answers on +382 33 461 173 and infopetrovac@budva.travel.

Sand, size and water

The beach is 600 m long and covers 9,525 m². The surface is sand with a reddish tint, the colour that gives the bay its look in photographs, and the water is clear. The bathing season runs from May to October. The bathing area Ponta (25H) at one end of the beach has held the Blue Flag; the flag belongs to that concession, not to the whole beach.

A reddish sand beach in front of old stone houses and a wooded hill — The reddish sand of Petrovac beach below the stone houses of the townPhoto: Zlatomir Bacic, CC BY-SA 3.0

Is Petrovac beach free?

Partly, by rule. On every public bathing area in Montenegro half of the beach, by length, stays free of loungers and umbrellas and is marked as such; on the furnished half one umbrella with two loungers takes at least 8 m². A free strip at least 3 m wide runs along the waterline, and a free passage to the sea at least 1 m wide is left every 20 m. Under the current rule the loungers on leased beaches are free after 17:00 only for citizens of Montenegro showing an ID; in earlier years the free evening applied to everyone. Lifeguards are on duty at one per 50 m of shore in July and August and one per 100 m in the other months of the season.

Petrovac the town

Houses with rooms, hotels, cafés and restaurants line the promenade behind the beach, and the town is compact enough to walk end to end in a quarter of an hour. At Mirišta, in the town, two late-antique floor mosaics decorated a Roman building of about the 3rd or 4th century AD: one, found in 1902, shows three fish sharing a single head, the other a rectangle of twelve fields. The excavation is unfinished and the site is not yet laid out for visitors. The Petrovac Jazz Festival fills the promenade in early September. On the Budva road, beside Reževići monastery, the Reževići memorial home occupies a school building of 1856, with a gallery, a library and an ethnographic room.