Olive terraces on the 1908 Bar–Ulcinj road, a hotel strip on the 1973 one, and the fastest-growing village in Mrkojevići.
Pečurice is a small village in the hill country of Montenegro's interior, the kind of settlement that appears on maps but not on itineraries. A handful of families live here among pastures and wooded slopes, on ground that rises and falls too steeply for anything but small fields, orchards and grazing. The houses are strung out rather than gathered into a centre, each with its own plot, outbuildings and walnut tree, which is how most of rural Montenegro was built long before the coast filled up with hotels.
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Mrkojevići by size
Residents by settlement, 2023 census
Dobra Voda and Pečurice hold 59% of the nine settlements’ 3,708 people between them. Both are the ones that reach the coast road; the other seven are hill villages of a hundred to three hundred.
Everything is close except the airport
Road distance from the village, km
The sea is a seven-minute drive and Bar is inside twenty minutes, but the airport is an hour and a quarter: the road north goes down to Bar first and through the Sozina tunnel.
Who visits Montenegro
Share of foreign overnight stays, 2025
MONSTAT · 2025
Census population, Pečurice municipality
Flat for four decades, then a different place: 187 people in 1948, 205 in 1991, 857 in 2023. Pečurice grew by half between the last two censuses — the fastest rate in Mrkojevići — while Velja Gorana, Dabezići and Pelinkovići each lost about a fifth. The hill hamlets are not where the growth went; the settlement’s other end, at the coast road, is.
The dates below belong to Mrkojevići, the nine-village region Pečurice sits in the middle of; a village this size has no separate chronology. Widths are to scale.
Mrkojevići tribal history (Vujović 1969; Metanović / NGO Mrkojevići; Bolizza 1614); MONSTAT.
The nearest places to Pečurice, at their true positions — Ostroš is about 13 km away in a straight line.
Schematic. Positions and distances are straight-line, from the coordinates we hold for each place; the outline is a diagram, not a boundary. Mountain roads make the drive routinely longer.
The climb: Dubrava → Pečurice
3.1 km and 150 metres up — the distance the village kept from its own sea until 1973
Sampled from EU-DEM 25 m along the road line; the village point itself reads 174 m. This is a local road, not the R-29 — that one runs inland, east through the villages.
A day on the hill
Two Pečurices, three kilometres apart
Mrkojevići has its own news portal, Glas Mrkojevića, and the region’s agenda is what it covers.
Glas Mrkojevića Fifty years since work began on the Bar–Ulcinj magistrala. Before it opened, Jusuf Kalamperović recalls, people from Pečurice and Dobra Voda walked down to the sea; there was no road a vehicle could take to the shore.
Glas Mrkojevića Work starts on a school sports hall of about 1,800 m² in Pečurice — a €1.2m project agreed with the education ministry and the Chicago emigrant association Rumija, tendered by the state capital-projects authority.
Glas Mrkojevića Kuća maslina in Stari Bar pressed 117,000 kg of olives over the season, 81% of it grown in Bar municipality. Mirsad Rašketić calls olive growing the only link the area has kept with the Mediterranean.
Glas Mrkojevića The 17th Mrkojevići Sports Games open on 26 July and close in Pečurice on 9 August — football, basketball, volleyball, swimming, SUP and a clay-pigeon round.
Glas Mrkojevića Villages from Velje Selo to Kamenički most are billed for refuse collection with the nearest containers 5–12 km away; the utility promises six semi-underground container points between the Pečurice school and Kamenički most.
Meanwhile, in 1973
Pečurice, until 1973 the way to the sea was on foot. The Bar–Ulcinj road finished in 1908 came up from Dobra Voda through the village, ran past the Mrkovsko polje and turned inland for Kunje and Gorana; the shore three kilometres below had no vehicle access at all.
The magistrala — on 4 July 1973, Fighters’ Day, the new coast road opened after two years of work. Put of Sarajevo took the longest stretch and subcontracted Kablar of Valjevo for the Ujtin potok bridge, with Mavrovo and Titograd’s OGP on the rest.
What followed — wages during construction, then a jump in land prices, villas where terraces had been, and a beach that had counted bathers by name counting them in thousands.
Elsewhere in 1973 — the October oil embargo roughly quadrupled the price of crude, and the Yugoslav coast spent the rest of the decade discovering what that meant for a tourist economy.
“The Mrkovići are one of the Montenegrin tribes, and they live south of Bar on a fertile and rich coastal plateau, which is thought to have been in the 11th century the location of the župa of Prapratna with the capital of the Prince of Zeta, Vojislav.”
Luka Vujović, 1969
The opening of Mrkovićki dijalekat, his study of the Mrkojevići dialect, in Srpski dijalektološki zbornik XVIII.
“The Mrkojevići, like the Paštrovići, were privileged by the Most Serene Republic of Venice and still receive salaries.”
Mariano Bolizza, 1614
From the Venetian nobleman’s Report and Description of the Sanjak of Shkodra, which counted every village. Marchoeuich: 260 houses, 1,000 men in arms, under Maro Nikov. Dobra Voda was still listed separately, at 40 houses and 100 men.
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JulStatehood Day at the monument — wreaths at the Pečurice monument to the fallen of the National Liberation War, 13 July
JulSportske igre Mrkojevića — the village games — the 17th edition ran 26 July to 9 August 2026
AugNoć Utjehe — the promenade night at Utjeha, 5 August in 2026, four kilometres south
The local plate
Mrkojevići had thirteen working olive mills in 1901 and the terraces are still olives. The pressing has moved down the hill: Kuća maslina in Stari Bar took 117,000 kg of fruit over the last season, 81 per cent of it grown in Bar municipality. Extra virgin is the one segment still growing, its manager reckons — 60 to 70 per cent of what Montenegro now produces.
Where Kuća maslina, Stari Bar — about 10 km up the coast
Pečurice in numbers
2023 census — four times the village of 1991
the Mrkojevići appear in Venetian records as Li Marchoe
the mosque at Ravanj; the region’s first was at Velje Selo in 1752
pressing olive oil across Mrkojevići in 1901, on 4,590 rala of land
the settlement’s own shore, with Veliki Pijesak at the north end of it
Podgorica (TGD) by road; Bar is 12 km, Ulcinj 18
MONSTAT 2023 census, settlement level · sr.wikipedia, after Republički zavod za statistiku · NGO Mrkojevići · shoreline and distances measured on OpenStreetMap
A few hours
Twenty minutes that show how a coast village is actually put together: terraces at the top, tourism at the bottom, one road between them.
One full day
The two Bar–Ulcinj roads make one loop: the inland road out through the villages, the coast road back.
A weekend
A base, not a destination: two towns, three beaches and the whole nine-village region inside half an hour.
Dubrava
Best for the settlement’s shore end — hotels, markets and bakeries on the coast road, with the sand at Veliki Pijesak a few hundred metres north
Ravanj and the terraces
Best for the old village: olive ground, the 1891 mosque, and three kilometres of climbing road between you and the sea
Dobra Voda, next door north
Best for more rooms than the rest of Mrkojevići together, and Mali Pijesak at the far end of the sand
Utjeha, 4 km south
Best for the long bay in Kunje, named after a restaurant — the older name is Val maslina
Best time: May · June · September
Glas Mrkojevića Putevi Bar, the contractor on the R-29, takes the old Kamenički bridge out of service — traffic uses the new one from now on.
The R-29, the inland road through the villages, was under reconstruction into 2026. Check it before planning the inland loop.