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What Travelers Say

Three kinds of source — a review aggregator, a guidebook and independent bloggers — all single out the Old Town, and the reviews flag the crowds in peak season.

TripAdvisor

The Old Town receives overwhelmingly positive reviews, with visitors praising its atmospheric streets, historical depth, and photogenic beauty. The Citadel and city wall walks are highlighted as must-do experiences. Diving operations receive excellent ratings, with reviewers praising well-organized centers, quality equipment, and diverse underwater sites. Common criticisms focus on summer overcrowding, aggressive pricing at some beach establishments, and traffic congestion during peak season [9].

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet calls Budva easily the country’s most-visited destination and likens its Old Town to a “mini-Dubrovnik” [1][6].

Travel Blogs and Independent Reviews

Independent travel bloggers consistently describe Budva as a highlight of Montenegro travel, emphasizing:

A Brief History of Budva

Budva's history falls into four parts: the pre-Roman town on the peninsula, the long Adriatic sequence from Rome through Venice, the earthquake that flattened the Old Town in 1979, and the tourism that began in the 1930s and, after independence, made Budva the busiest resort in the country.

Before the legend

Budva claims to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on the Adriatic coast, and the evidence supports the boast. Archaeological finds on the peninsula date a fortified settlement here to at least the 7th–6th centuries BC, the date Budva Museums gives for the pylons of its ancient gate; the necropolis goes back to the 5th century BC, and Greek and later Hellenistic influence arrived through trade. Legend attributes the town's founding to Cadmus, the mythological Phoenician prince who was exiled from Thebes and wandered the coast with his wife Harmonia before settling on this rocky promontory. In the Greek myth, the couple end their days in Illyria transformed into serpents, not fish; the paired-fish image on Budva's souvenirs comes from a separate, modern local tale. The story is almost certainly myth — mythology, not excavation evidence — but it speaks to how ancient Budva felt even to the ancients themselves.

The archaeology is strong enough without turning myth into fact. Budva Museums dates pylons from an ancient gate to the seventh–sixth centuries BCE and documents Hellenistic, Roman and late-antique material from the necropolis. The institution uses 1938 for Budva’s recognition as a major archaeological site; Budva Tourism says the necropolis was discovered in 1937. “Late 1930s” is more honest than pretending the two public accounts say exactly the same thing.

Rome, Venice and the long Adriatic sequence

The Romans folded the town into the province of Dalmatia, naming it Butua. After the fall of the Western Empire, Budva passed through Byzantine hands and then, like much of the Montenegrin coast, came under the long and formative rule of the Venetian Republic. Official tourism history places Venetian rule from 1442 to 1797. Venice shaped Budva's architecture, its maritime traditions, and its cultural identity. The compact walled town you see today — the narrow streets, the stone palazzos, the fortified citadel at the peninsula's tip — is fundamentally Venetian in character, even if the materials and the spirit are distinctly Montenegrin.

Aerial view of Budva Old Town peninsula jutting into the turquoise Adriatic, showing the compact walled settlement and surrounding beaches

After Venice fell to Napoleon, Budva followed the familiar Adriatic trajectory: a first period of Austrian rule (1797–1806), a brief Russian–Montenegrin interlude (1806–07), French rule (1807–13), then Austria and later Austria-Hungary until liberation in November 1918, incorporation into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and decades under Tito's socialist federation. Tourism arrived between the wars — the road from Cetinje opened in 1931, the royal villa at Miločer followed in 1935 and Hotel Avala in 1939 — and grew through the Yugoslav 1960s and 1970s.

The earthquakes and the rebuilding

Two events transformed modern Budva. The first was the devastating earthquake of April 15, 1979, which struck the entire Montenegrin coast and reduced much of Budva's Old Town to rubble. It was not the first: the city also suffered severe earthquake damage in 1667. The reconstruction that followed 1979 — painstaking, largely faithful to the original Venetian-era designs — took eight years — the rebuilt Old Town reopened in 1987 — and gave Budva the restored quarter it has today. Ironically, the earthquake may have saved Budva's heritage: without the forced restoration, the slow decay of neglect might have done equal damage over the following decades.

It also reshaped what is known about the ancient city. Systematic work after 1979 exposed a large burial area spanning several periods. The earthquake did not “gift” archaeology to the city; it damaged homes and monuments, then created conditions for rescue excavation and a long recovery. Objects went to Cetinje for conservation and returned to the City Museum in 2003.

Meanwhile, in 1979 1979 The 15 April earthquake wrecked the coast; UNESCO inscribed Kotor that year, straight onto its List in Danger. IRAN Revolution topples the Shah; an Islamic Republic is declared BRITAIN Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman Prime Minister SPACE Voyager 1 sweeps past Jupiter and returns the most detailed images yet JAPAN Sony launches the Walkman and changes how the world hears music USSR The Red Army rolls into Afghanistan in December MUSIC Pink Floyd release The Wall Anchor date: Montenegro earthquake, 15 April 1979 — magnitude 6.9, the coast rebuilt through the 1980s.
Myth, archaeology and discovery are different layers
LayerEvidence
CULTURAL MYTHCadmus and Harmonia; the paired fish are later local lore
7th–6th c BCEAncient gate pylons and urban evidence
LATE 1930sNecropolis recognized as a major site
AFTER 1979Rescue excavation, conservation and reconstruction
TakeawayThe myth is meaningful; the archaeology proves antiquity

Source: muzejiigalerijebd.me, budva.travel

The second transformation was tourism. It began in the 1930s and grew in the Yugoslav 1960s and 1970s; after Montenegrin independence in 2006 it accelerated and made Budva the country's premier resort destination. Today it is by far the most visited municipality in Montenegro, and the gap between how many people live here and how many sleep here in August is what shapes everything from restaurant prices to traffic congestion.

A long arcaded stone building under new terracotta tile inside Budva Old Town, a bell tower behind it.
Restored stone and new tile. Almost everything standing in the Old Town today was put back after 1979, largely to the Venetian-era designs.

Independence, and the boom that followed

What the sources say

Montenegro left its state union with Serbia after the referendum of 21 May 2006, and no town on the coast has been changed more by what followed. The rebuilt Old Town had reopened in 1987, eight years after the earthquake; what independence added was scale. The municipality counted 27,445 residents at the 2023 census — up 43% on 2011 and more than double its 1991 figure of 11,547, the fastest growth of any municipality in the country — and in 2025, according to Budva Tourism, it recorded about 4.9 million overnight stays.

A town of twenty-seven thousand people hosting nearly five million tourist nights a year is what the August traffic, the parking, the July price of a sunbed and the sudden quiet of October are all made of.