Montenegro

The mountains around Cetinje were the one corner of the Balkans the Ottomans never fully subdued. From 1696 a line of prince-bishops, the vladikas of the Petrović-Njegoš family, ruled a small warrior theocracy there; the greatest of them, Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, was also the national poet. The Congress of Berlin recognised Montenegro as an independent state in 1878, and it became a kingdom under Nikola I in 1910.

After the First World War, Montenegro was absorbed — against much local opposition — into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia, and it remained one of the six Yugoslav republics through the socialist era. When Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990s, Montenegro stayed with Serbia, first as Federal Yugoslavia and then in a loose "State Union" from 2003.

Milo Đukanović, dominant in Montenegrin politics from 1991, steered the country away from Belgrade, and a 2006 referendum backed independence by a narrow margin. Montenegro joined NATO in 2017 over Russian objections and is now the leading candidate for EU membership, with negotiations well advanced. A 2020 election brought the first change of government in three decades, and politics has been unsettled since.

Montenegro carries a highland heritage of clans (bratstva), epic poetry sung to the one-stringed gusle, and an honour code that prized bravery and generosity to guests. That austere Dinaric world sits alongside a Mediterranean coast shaped by centuries of Venetian rule, with its own architecture, food, and easier rhythm.

Orthodox Christianity is the majority faith, but it is itself contested between a dominant Serbian Orthodox Church and a smaller Montenegrin one — a split bound up with the wider question of whether Montenegrins are a distinct nation or part of the Serbian one. There are also long-settled Muslim (Bosniak and Albanian) and, around the Bay of Kotor, Catholic communities. Families mark a slava, the day of their patron saint.

Montenegrins joke about their own reputation for taking it easy — a mock set of "commandments" begins "man is born tired and lives to rest". They are also, in fact, among the tallest people in the world, and produce national teams to match in basketball, water polo, and handball.

With only around 600,000 people, Montenegro is a country of small towns. Podgorica, hot and functional, is the administrative and business centre; Cetinje, in the hills, keeps the status of old royal capital. The coast — Herceg Novi, Kotor, Budva, Bar, Ulcinj — lives largely off a summer tourist season that transforms it and then empties, while the northern mountains around Žabljak, Kolašin, and Pljevlja are poorer, colder, and losing people.

The economy leans heavily on that coastal tourism, along with hydropower, aluminium, and a great deal of foreign real-estate investment, including a superyacht marina built on a former naval base at Tivat. A Chinese-financed motorway toward Serbia has left the small state with a heavy debt.

Since 2022, large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians have settled, especially on the coast, adding to the seasonal swing in prices and pressure on housing. Family and clan networks, and political patronage, still count for a lot in a place this size.

On the coast the food is Dalmatian: grilled fish and squid, black cuttlefish risotto, shellfish na buzaru, olive oil, and cured ham and cheese from the village of Njeguši near Cetinje. Inland it turns hearty — lamb and veal cooked ispod sača under an iron bell heaped with embers, kačamak and cicvara (maize porridges enriched with cheese and kajmak), and priganice, fried dough with honey and cheese.

Balkan staples run through both: ćevapi grilled minced-meat fingers, burek and other filled pita, stuffed peppers, and ajvar relish. Lake Skadar supplies carp and eel to the restaurants along its shore.

The national wines are the dark red Vranac and the white Krstač, most of the country's output coming from one enormous vineyard on the Ćemovsko plain near Podgorica. Rakija, usually grape loza, is the spirit, and coffee is taken strong and slow.

The Bay of Kotor is the country's showpiece: the walled Venetian town of Kotor under a mountain topped by the fortress of San Giovanni, the baroque town of Perast with its island church of Our Lady of the Rocks, and a serpentine road climbing to the Njegoš mausoleum on Mount Lovćen. Along the coast, Budva has a compact old town and a strip of busy beaches, and the fortified islet of Sveti Stefan is one of the Adriatic's iconic sights.

Inland, Ostrog Monastery is dug into a sheer cliff and draws pilgrims of several faiths. Durmitor National Park around Žabljak has the Black Lake, glacial peaks, and the Tara River canyon — among the deepest in the world and the country's rafting run — spanned by the Đurđevića Tara bridge. Biogradska Gora protects one of Europe's last primeval forests.

In the south, Lake Skadar, the largest lake in the Balkans, is a national park of reed beds, pelicans, monasteries, and small wineries, and Old Bar has a ruined hill town beside an olive tree said to be over two thousand years old.