Where to find the best portuni
Kotor has the densest concentration — work through the lanes between the squares rather than following the main route, and look above the lintels for carved dates, coats of arms and the initials of the families who built them.
Perast and Prcanj reward a slower look: these were captains' villages, and the doorways were a way of showing what a voyage had paid for. In Perast the palaces along the waterfront carry the grandest examples; in Prcanj they are strung out along the shore road.
Herceg Novi mixes Venetian and Ottoman work in the same few streets, and the stairways of the old town keep turning up doorways at odd angles. Rose, on the Lustica side, has plainer village portuni, many of them now shut on empty houses.
What to notice. The stone is mostly local limestone, and the better doorways are dated — anything from the 1600s onward is common. Remember that these are private homes: photograph the doorway, not through it.
