Perast

Getting there

Perast lies on the bay road between Kotor and Risan, opposite the Verige strait; the Kamenari-Lepetane ferry is on the same road beyond Risan. Tivat Airport is 21 km away, about half an hour. The times below are road times without traffic; in summer add the queue at the town entrances.

By bus. Two Blue Line local lines run along the bay past Perast: Risan-Kotor (ŠC) and Novo Naselje Škaljari-Kostanjica. The ŠC stop is by the sports centre next to Kotor's Old Town, not the intercity bus station. The municipality publishes the timetables on its public transport page. During the summer closure the buses do not drive through the town; they stop at the two entrances. Coaches with more than 23 seats are banned from the lower road through Perast all year, apart from school buses and scheduled local services. The buses guide covers the intercity network.

By boat. The Bay of Kotor boat tours from Kotor call at Perast and the islet on their way round the bay. If you travel with a dog, the leash rules for Kotor municipality are in the travelling with a dog guide.

Cars and parking in summer

The single road through Perast is closed to motor vehicles in summer. The municipal traffic decision sets the period at 15 May to 30 September, from 09:00 to 01:00 each day. Exempt are electric and non-motorised vehicles, residents who can show a parking space on their own plot, people with disabilities, fire and ambulance vehicles and permit holders; deliveries to shops and restaurants are allowed 06:00-09:00. The start date applied has shifted from year to year, so the Perast local community announces each season's arrangement. Barriers that read number plates stand at both ends of the town. Outside the closure the road through the town is a 30 km/h zone.

Visitors park at the two car parks at the town entrances, one on the Kotor side and one on the Risan side. Both are run by private operators under a lease from Morsko dobro, the public coastal authority, and both are paid; no official tariff is published, so check the price at the barrier. In 2023 and 2024 a free electric shuttle (two four-seat cars and a ten-seat bus) ran between the car parks and the town for residents and visitors; whether it runs is part of each season's announcement. The only parking inside the town is along the waterfront, and by day in summer residents themselves struggle to find a space there.

The islands: Our Lady of the Rocks and St George

Our Lady of the Rocks (Gospa od Škrpjela) is reached only by boat. Small boats shuttle from the Perast waterfront: walk down to the quay and arrange the trip with one of the boatmen; fares and departure times are their own and are not published. The bay tours from Kotor also stop at the islet. The island is man-made: its “birthday” is 22 July 1452, the date of the legend of the Mortešić brothers and the crag that now lies under the main altar, and about a hundred old ships were sunk around the rock by 1603 to build it up. The present church dates largely from after 1666; the 1667 earthquake damaged it, and the presbytery was added in 1720-1725. Inside are 68 canvases by Tripo Kokolja, about 2,000 silver votive plates from 17 Kotor workshops, the Kunić embroidery and a silver relief of Perast under Ottoman attack in 1654, made in Venice in 1736-1738. More than 150 ships have been named after the church, and a small museum stands beside it.

The natural island beside it, St George (Sveti Đorđe), carries a 12th-century church and the old Perast graveyard, and is protected as a category II cultural monument. One of its abbots, Ivan Krusala, served Peter the Great and went on a mission to the Chinese emperor for him. In 1813, when the people of Perast took the Holy Cross fort, the French garrison withdrew to the island and set up its cannons there.

What to see in town

Perast never had walls. The old shore road along the houses was the main street, landing and boatyard until the second half of the 17th century; when the baroque palaces went up in the front row by the sea, the narrow lane behind them became Stari put, the Old Road, its width set by the older defensive towers of the Visković, Mazarović and Marković-Martinović families. Most houses are a ground floor and one storey with a balcony to the sea. The town climbs in steps up the slope of the hill Sveti Ilija, with lanes dropping to the water, and its open spaces are small: the pjaca (main square) in front of St Nicholas, the museum square, the Bogliva spring and the Visković garden. Noble families built towers beside their palaces, and some houses still show loopholes and carved mascarons.

St Nicholas and the bell tower

The parish church of St Nicholas (Sv. Nikola) stands on the main square: the old church dates from 1616, the new one from 1740. Its bell tower is 55 m high and gives the panoramic view of the bay. The church keeps honours given to the islet's shrine, among them a Russian Order of St Alexander Nevsky and four medals of the Order of St Mark, and Tripo Kokolja painted here as well as in Our Lady of the Rosary. A painted ceiling, probably the model for the one on the islet, is lost. From 1 to 15 May the Maypole stands on the square (see the events below).

The Perast Museum

The Perast Museum fills the Bujović palace on the waterfront, Obala Marka Martinovića. Count Vicko Bujović, several times captain of the town, fought for Trebinje and Herceg Novi and against North African corsairs, and was murdered in a conspiracy on the town square on 6 May 1709. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday, 08:00-20:00 from 15 April to 15 October and 10:00-16:00 from 15 October to 15 April; it is closed on Mondays, for all of January, on Orthodox Easter, on 1 May and on 13-14 November. The ticket is €8 (€5 for children up to 12); a €15 joint ticket also covers the Roman mosaics in Risan and the Muzeji Kotor sites in Kotor. Inside are ship models, navigation instruments and weapons, the portraits of the captains, the 1711 painting of Marko Martinović teaching the Russian cadets, works by Kokolja, and the salon of the Balović palace where Petar II Petrović Njegoš occasionally stayed. The town council founded the museum on 28 February 1937; the 1979 earthquake damaged the palace, and its repair lasted until 1998.

Palaces and churches

The palaces of the late 17th century line the shore: Bujović, Smekja, Visković, the lower Zmajević palace, Vukasović and Bronza, with the older seafront houses of the Šestokrilović, Marković-Martinović, Štukanović and Burović families among them. The churches follow the families. Our Lady of the Rosary (1694) is part of the Zmajević complex; St Mark (1760) belongs to the Smekja palace; St Anthony with its monastery dates from 1679 and St John the Baptist, in the west of the town, from 1595; the chapel of the Holy Redeemer stands behind the Bronza palace, St Michael at the cemetery, the Orthodox church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the town and St Anne above it. More of the region's churches are on the churches and monasteries page.

The Holy Cross fort

Sveti Križ, the Holy Cross fort above the town, was built in 1570 and was Perast's only fortification; the town's position at the entrance to the Kotor bay made it a checkpoint for defence and goods. In 1813 the people of Perast took the fort from the French.

History in brief

Venice held Perast from 1420 to 1797, and that is the town's golden age; the documents in the museum run from 1441 to 1796. The seafaring that paid for the palaces also made the town a school: a private maritime school existed here from 1512, among the oldest on the Adriatic, the Franciscans opened a school that taught seamanship in 1636, and in 1698 Captain Marko Martinović ran a navigation course for the cadets of Tsar Peter the Great. Matija Zmajević (1680-1735) joined the Russian navy in 1712, fought at Gangut and rose to admiral. On 15 May 1654 the people of Perast beat off an Ottoman attack at the Verige strait in which the Ottoman commander Mehmed-aga Rizvanagić was killed; the town has kept the day as its votive day ever since. After the earthquake of 1667 came the baroque rebuilding, the Zmajević, Bujović, Bronza, Smekja, Balović and Visković palaces, while Tripo Kokolja (born in Perast in 1661, died in Korčula in 1713), trained in Venice under the patronage of Archbishop Andrija Zmajević, painted the islet church. Until the end of the 18th century more than 2,000 people lived here.

Perast is said to have been the last town to lower the Venetian flag, two months after the Republic fell in 1797. Austria, Russia, France and Austria again followed, and the town lost its importance; Boka and Montenegro united in 1813, but the powers returned the bay to Austria until 1918. By the start of the 20th century about 400 people lived in Perast; the census counted 637 in 1971, 349 in 2003, 269 in 2011 and 237 in 2023, and of the 318 dwellings counted in 2011 about 200 are used only seasonally. The urban whole of Perast has been a category I cultural monument of Montenegro since 1949, and in 1979 the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor entered the UNESCO World Heritage List, with Kotor and Perast named in the criteria as “highly characteristic and authentically preserved small cities”; the region was on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1979 to 2003.

Fašinada and the other dates

• 1 May, Kićenje mađa (the Perast Maypole). A young elm decorated with bottles of milk and wine, dry cakes called koromani and ribbons is planted on the square in front of St Nicholas by the last man to have married that year, and stays until 15 May.
• 15 May, Zavjetni dan (Peraška Gospa). The votive day of the 1654 victory: a parade of the Boka Navy (Bokeljska mornarica, on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage since 2021) and the Kotor town band, flowers at the cemetery at the monument to Admiral Vladislav Brajković, the Navy's kolo dance in front of St Nicholas and mass. The rooster shooting (gađanje kokota) that once closed the day has been dropped from the official programme after animal-welfare objections. The organiser is the Society of Friends of Perast.
• June, International Klapa Festival Perast. Three evenings of a cappella singing: children's klapas and new songs on the first night, women's klapas on the second, men's on the third.
• 22 July, Fašinada. At dusk the men of the old families, the parish priest and the Boka Navy row decorated boats loaded with stones from Pošova to the islet and drop them around it, as they have every year since 1452; the custom has been national intangible heritage since 2013. An evening fish dinner on the islet and a klapa concert on the square follow. The organisers are the Perast local community and the Society of Friends of Perast. See also Montenegro in July.
• Summer and spring. KotorArt, Kotor's international festival founded in 2002, stages part of its programme in Perast; a strings festival (Festival gudača) is held in spring.

Swimming

Perast has no beach. No bathing site in the town appears in the national atlas of beaches and bathing places, and swimming is from the stone and concrete platforms along the shore. The sea bathing season on the coast runs from May to October, the months in which the sea water is tested. For paddling in the bay see the kayaking and SUP page.

When to visit and crowds

The museum's long hours run from 15 April to 15 October, the bathing season from May to October, and the fixed dates are 1 May, 15 May, the June klapa festival and 22 July. Summer days are the problem: the entrances jam, cars line both sides of the main road above the town, most visitors are passing through, many in rental cars, and residents avoid driving in by day. The closure starts at 09:00, so the quiet hours are early morning and the evening. Day visitors also come from the cruise ships in Kotor; the port's daily arrivals list shows which days the ships are in. The cold bura wind from the Risan and Orahovac side passes the town by, and a west wind blows in summer. In winter the museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-16:00 and is closed in January, and the road through the town is open to cars.

Where to stay and eat

Accommodation is small-scale: hotels in restored stone palaces and houses on the waterfront, and apartments in the lanes above. Restaurants and konobas line the quay. The local sweet is Peraška torta, an almond cake with pine nuts and a protected traditional speciality, described on the local food page. The town has a post office (postcode 85336) and ATMs on the waterfront.

Nearby

• Kotor, 14 km: the walled Old Town, the climb to St John's Fortress, the Church of St Luke and the Maritime Museum of Montenegro, with the Kotor serpentine above it.
• Risan, up the bay road towards Herceg Novi, with the Roman mosaics on the joint museum ticket.
• Tivat and Porto Montenegro, 21 km, by the airport.
• Herceg Novi and Portonovi at the entrance to the bay, 29 km round the shore; the Kamenari-Lepetane ferry, which crosses the strait to the Tivat side, is on the same road.
• By boat: the Blue Cave and Mamula island on the bay tours.
• Planning: Perast is day 2 of the 3-day itinerary and one of the day trips from Kotor; the old towns page sets it beside the other historic cores, and the Montenegrin coast page covers the region. Christmas mass times are in the Christmas guide, and the limits for flying are in the drone rules.

Questions

How far is Perast from Kotor?

13.8 km by the bay road, about 22 minutes without traffic.

How do I get from Kotor to Perast by bus?

On the Blue Line local lines Risan-Kotor (ŠC) or Novo Naselje Škaljari-Kostanjica, which run along the bay past Perast; the ŠC stop is by the sports centre next to the Old Town, not the intercity station. In summer the buses stop at the town entrances rather than driving through. Timetables are on the municipality's public transport page.

Can I drive into Perast?

Not in summer by day. The municipal decision closes the road through the town to motor vehicles from 15 May to 30 September, 09:00-01:00, with exemptions for residents with their own parking space, electric vehicles, people with disabilities and permit holders; the dates applied are announced each season. Park at the entrances and walk in.

Where do I park in Perast?

At the car parks at the two entrances, on the Kotor side and the Risan side. They are paid and run by private operators under a Morsko dobro lease; no official tariff is published.

How do I get to Our Lady of the Rocks?

By boat from the Perast waterfront, arranged on the quay with one of the boatmen; the bay tours from Kotor also call at the islet. Fares and times are the boatmen's own.

Is there a beach in Perast?

No. The town has no listed bathing site; people swim from the stone and concrete platforms along the shore, in the May to October season.

How long do you need in Perast?

Half a day: an hour for the waterfront and St Nicholas, an hour for the museum, and the boat to the islet and back. For the Fašinada or the klapa festival, stay the evening.

When is the Fašinada?

Every 22 July at dusk, when the boats leave Pošova for the islet; a klapa concert on the square follows later in the evening.

Is Perast a UNESCO site?

Yes. It lies inside the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor, on the World Heritage List since 1979, and criterion (iv) of the inscription names Kotor and Perast. Nationally the urban whole of Perast has been a category I cultural monument since 1949.

How many people live in Perast?

237 at the 2023 census, down from 269 in 2011 and 637 in 1971; before 1800 the town had more than 2,000 people.

Is the Perast Museum open in winter?

Yes, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-16:00 from 15 October to 15 April, closed on Mondays and for the whole of January.

Is Perast worth a trip from a cruise ship in Kotor?

It is 22 minutes each way by road without traffic, and the town itself takes about two hours with the boat to the islet. In summer the road through the town is closed by day, so a car or coach drops you at the entrance.