Bar Municipality

The municipality of Bar is the transport hub of the Montenegrin coast: ferries from Italy dock here, and the railway line from Belgrade ends here. A trip to Bar also reveals an abandoned medieval town at the foot of the mountains, an olive tree more than 2,000 years old, and beaches like those at Čanj and Sutomore.

Bar and Stari Bar

Modern Bar is a port city with a palm-lined promenade, King Nikola's palace on the waterfront, and Montenegro's largest harbor, from which ferries depart for Bari and Ancona. A few miles inland lies Stari Bar, the old town perched on a rock beneath the Rumija mountains. It was destroyed in fighting in the 19th century and abandoned; today you can wander among the ruins of churches, a mosque, a hammam, gates and an aqueduct. Below it lies a bazaar quarter with small shops. In Mirovica grows the "Stara Maslina," an olive tree whose age is estimated at more than 2,000 years.

Coast and Hinterland

North of Bar you'll find Sutomore, with a long beach that in summer is visited mainly by families from Serbia and Montenegro, and Čanj, a bay with a pebble beach surrounded by hills with olive groves. The municipality extends across the mountains all the way to Lake Skadar: Virpazar is the starting point for boat tours through fields of water lilies and to island monasteries in the national park, and around the lake lie the wine villages of Crmnica, where Vranac is pressed.

Above Stari Bar, hiking trails lead through olive groves and chestnut forests up the Rumija, from whose summit you can see both the Adriatic and Lake Skadar in clear weather. Small villages are scattered across the slope, whose residents press olives and keep goats. The monastery of Starčeva Gorica, on a tiny island in Lake Skadar, can only be reached by boat.

Food, Getting There and Best Time to Visit

Olive oil from Bar, carp and bleak from Lake Skadar, grilled fish and goat cheese shape the cuisine; in November the town celebrates an olive festival. The Belgrade–Bar railway is one of the most spectacular mountain routes in Europe, Podgorica Airport is about 31 miles away, and the Sozina Tunnel shortens the drive to the capital. The best time to visit is May through October.