Museums in Montenegro

Which museum for what

• Royal Montenegro. King Nikola's Museum in Cetinje: the furnished palace of 1867, with the Oktoih, the first Cyrillic book, completed on 4 January 1494 by the press Đurađ Crnojević founded in 1493.
• Njegoš. The Biljarda with the manuscript of The Mountain Wreath, the birth house at Njeguši and the mausoleum on Lovćen, the last two on one €8 ticket.
• Seafaring. The Maritime Museum in Kotor, then the Perast Museum for the captains' town.
• Antiquity. The Roman mosaics at Risan, the Podgorica City Museum for Doclea and the Budva City Museum for the Hellenistic and Roman necropolises.
• Art. The Art Museum and Dado gallery in Cetinje, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Podgorica.
• Free. The Money Museum in Cetinje, always; the Museum of Contemporary Art on the first Wednesday of the month.

Cetinje: the National Museum and its neighbours

The National Museum of Montenegro is a group of units around Dvorski trg in Cetinje, all on one price list and one timetable: daily 09:00-16:00 in summer (from 11 or 15 April, depending on the unit, to 15 November), Monday to Friday 09:00-15:00 in winter, last entry 30 minutes before closing.

• King Nikola's Museum fills the palace of 1867 with the royal interiors and shows the Oktoih of 1494. €8, pupils and students €4.
• The Njegoš Museum in the Biljarda, his residence of 1838, holds the manuscript of The Mountain Wreath; in the courtyard is the relief map of Montenegro made in 1917. €5, pupils and students €2.50, relief included.
• The Art Museum in the Government House: over 4,000 works of Montenegrin and Yugoslav art, memorial rooms of Lubarda, Milunović, Filo and Dado, and the icon of Our Lady of Philermos in the Blue Chapel. €5, pupils and students €2.50. The Historical Museum in the same building is closed to visitors.
• The Ethnographic Museum in the former Serbian legation: folk costume and rural and town interiors of the 19th and early 20th century. €4, pupils and students €2.
• The Dado gallery on Balšića Pazar, opened in 2012: retrospectives of Montenegrin artists and guest shows, Tuesday to Saturday, closed from January to early April.
• Njegoš's birth house of 1779 at Njeguši: a memorial museum since 1973, open in summer only. €3, pupils and students €1.50, included in the mausoleum ticket.

Two more museums in Cetinje are not part of the National Museum. The Central Bank's Money Museum at Njegoševa 122 shows two permanent exhibitions on money and numismatics, with a perper coin struck as a souvenir, and is free. The Njegoš Mausoleum on Lovćen is run by the National Museum and open from 11 April to 15 November, 09:00-16:00; its €8 ticket includes the birth house.

The Bay of Kotor: Kotor, Perast, Risan, Herceg Novi

• The Maritime Museum of Montenegro in the Baroque Grgurina palace in the Old Town of Kotor grew from the collection of the Bokeljska mornarica fraternity, open to the public since 1900 and in this palace since 1938: salons of seafaring families from Prčanj and Risan, weapons, steam shipping, both World Wars. €6, students and children €2; weekday mornings from 09:00 under every timetable the museum publishes.
• The Perast Museum in the 17th-century Bujović Palace on the waterfront of Perast: about 2,000 objects, with ship models, captains' portraits and paintings by Tripo Kokolja. €8, children up to 12 €5.
• The Roman mosaics of Risan: the floors of a 2nd-century town villa found in 1930, the mosaic of Hypnos, god of sleep, the best known. €6, children up to 12 €4. A €15 Muzeji Kotor ticket covers Perast, Risan, the Gallery of Solidarity, the Lapidarium and St Paul's Church in Kotor.
• The Mirko Komnenović City Museum in Herceg Novi, in an 18th-century house in Topla with a botanical garden: icons of the Boka school, archaeology and ethnography.

Podgorica, Budva, Bar and Medun

• The Podgorica City Museum: finds from Bioče, about 50,000 BC, to Roman Doclea, plus history, ethnography and icons. The best-known Doclea find, the 4th-century Podgorica Cup, is in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
• The Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro in the Petrović Palace, Perjanički dom and its own gallery in Podgorica: 1,146 works in six collections, including the art of the Non-Aligned countries gathered from 1984. €5; pupils, students and pensioners €2; under 12 free; everyone free on the first Wednesday of the month.
• The Natural History Museum of Montenegro, also in Podgorica: over 15,000 rocks, minerals, fossils, plants and animals in 15 collections, shown in a small gallery and in travelling exhibitions.
• The Marko Miljanov Museum at Medun, in the house below the fortress: the house where the Kuči leader and writer (1833-1901) lived from 1878, with an audio guide in Montenegrin and English.
• The Budva City Museum in the Old Town of Budva: three floors of archaeology from the Hellenistic and Roman necropolises and one of ethnography. €5, 12 to 18 €3, under 12 free.
• The Zavičajni muzej in King Nikola's Palace of 1885 on the seafront of Bar, reopened in July 2026 after a two-year restoration. €4, children 6 to 14 €1.

Opening hours and tickets

Summer at the National Museum units runs from 11 or 15 April, depending on the unit, to 15 November, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. A dash means the museum publishes no figure.

Combined tickets

In Cetinje, one ticket for all National Museum units and the Njegoš Mausoleum costs €20, or €10 for pupils and students; children under 12, Cetinje residents and ICOM members enter every unit free. The mausoleum alone costs €8 and includes Njegoš's birth house. In the bay, the €15 Muzeji Kotor ticket covers the Perast Museum, the Risan mosaics, the Gallery of Solidarity, the Lapidarium and St Paul's Church in Kotor; the Maritime Museum is a separate institution with its own €6 ticket.