Tucked into the cliffs west of Ulcinj's Old Town is a beach unlike any other on the Adriatic. Ženska plaža — the Women's Beach, or Ladies' Beach — is a small, sheltered cove where a sulphur-rich spring flows directly into the sea, and where, through the summer season, only women may enter. It is at once a spa, a sanctuary and a piece of living social history.
A century of medical reputation
The beach's fame rests on its water. A natural spring carrying dissolved sulphur and other minerals emerges at the cove and mixes with the seawater, tinting it a deep green and lending the air the faint, unmistakable mineral tang that spa-goers from Iceland to Japan will recognise. Local tradition holds that bathing here aids fertility, and women — including many who have struggled to conceive — have been coming for generations.
What is documented is the medical attention. Physicians began pointing patients toward Ulcinj's sulphur waters in the early twentieth century, and in 1932 Dr Jovan Kujačić published a study of Ulcinj as a healing resort, giving the tradition its first scientific framing. Later visitors of scientific standing — the great physicist Mihajlo Pupin among those said to have praised the site, and a Russian researcher who compared the springs to the famous waters of Aachen — added to the reputation. Modern local doctors still recommend the beach, primarily for skin and respiratory complaints, where the combination of sulphur, salt water, and intense Mediterranean sun genuinely can help.
Honesty requires a modest framing of the science: sulphurous mineral waters have a long, partially evidenced history in dermatology and balneotherapy, but no rigorous study has shown that any beach cures infertility. What can be said truthfully is that a century of bathers has found the place soothing, that the mineral water is real, and that rest, sun, sea and hope have their own medicine in them. The beach makes no laboratory claims; it offers a ritual, and rituals matter.
A women's space, and why it endures
The women-only rule — in force through the bathing season, roughly May to October — is the beach's other defining feature, and it long predates modern debates about such spaces. It grew from practical modesty in a traditional Muslim-majority town: a screened cove gave women a place to bathe freely, undress for the sun, and take the waters without observation. It endures because it works. Behind the entrance, the atmosphere is by all accounts relaxed and unselfconscious — multiple generations together, swimsuits optional in practice, conversation flowing between locals and visitors from across the region who return summer after summer. In an era when women-only spaces are being rediscovered elsewhere as a wellness trend, Ulcinj can reasonably claim to have been running one continuously for generations, without ever calling it anything more elaborate than the Women's Beach.
Etiquette for visitors
- Respect the rule absolutely. During the season the cove is for women and small children only; men and older boys should choose the neighbouring beaches. Partners typically wait at cafés nearby.
- No photography inside. Many bathers are unclothed and all are entitled to privacy; keep phones and cameras away.
- Pay the small entrance fee charged in season — it maintains the facilities.
- Go gently. This is a quiet, convivial space with an older-than-average crowd; treat it more like a spa than a party beach.
Visiting
Ženska plaža lies a short distance west of Ulcinj's centre along the cliffy shore, an easy taxi ride or a pleasant walk, and it forms its own stage on the Pinjes Pines walk, which follows this pine-crowned stretch of coast. The season runs from late spring to mid-autumn; mornings are calmest, and the enclosed cove holds heat well into October. The water over the spring is noticeably warmer and greener than the open sea — ease in, float, and let the minerals do whatever it is they do. Facilities are simple but sufficient: changing spots, showers and a seasonal café, with more comprehensive services back in town a few minutes away. Afterwards, the walk back toward the Old Town at sunset, with pines above and the sulphur tang giving way to salt, is one of Ulcinj's simplest pleasures.