Four and a half metres of rain a year on a mountain with no springs — and the roofless town Austria-Hungary built here for seven thousand soldiers. The plateau around it is down to about a hundred people.
1.092 m nadmorske visine
Aerodrom TIV · 41 km
Garrison town, 1882–1918
Crkvice su gotovi napušteni grad visoko na planini Orjen iznad Bokokotorskog zaliva. Drže evropski rekord po godišnjoj količini padavina, sa preko 4.900 mm kiše godišnje. Nekada napredno naselje, danas je uglavnom grad duhova, koji privlači avanturističke planinare privučene njegovom sjetnom atmosferom i ekstremnom mikroklimom.
the 1931–1960 average at the Crkvice gauge, and 4,631 mm for 1961–1990 — the wettest inhabited place in Europe
1,092 m
Nadmorska visina
the village; the Dinarsko gorje gazetteer gives 940 m for the rain gauge, and the two forts above it stand at 1,154 m and 1,225 m
2
Tvrđava
Kom and Stražnik, two of some 70 forts in the Primorska tvrđava Boka system
70 days
Dani snijega
under snow in an average year at the Crkvice station; Risan, a thousand metres below, averages two
own generator
Struja
the camp made its own power and drew water from twelve cisterns — Orjen has no springs
41 km
Aerodrom
Tivat, 59 minutes, including the Kamenari–Lepetane ferry
Crkvice gauge series 1931–1990 and the two fort elevations (Dinarsko gorje) · en.wikipedia (Crkvice; Orjen; Fort Kom) · RTCG on the FORT-NET panels · road distance measured on the OSM network
Gdje se nalazi Crkvice
Najbliža mjesta mjestu Crkvice, na svojim stvarnim položajima — Rudine je udaljeno oko 20 km vazdušnom linijom.
1Up from the coast: the plateau road leaves the sea at the Lipci roundabout, 4.9 km west of Risan
2The bakery ruin — the bakery filled the ground floor, the hall with the cinema in it the floor above
3The two big cisterns of the twelve: a surviving wall some 40 m long and its pillars, on a mountain with no springs
4The monument to the insurgents of 1869, unveiled here on 17 August 1969
5The 500-metre path up to Fort Kom at 1,154 m — three officers and fifty-nine men held it
Two hours on the FORT-NET trail. Of more than 150 buildings only a few big shells are still standing, and nothing up here is staffed or for sale: carry your own water.
Cio dan
1Risan first, for the five Roman mosaics of Rhizinium, then the climb
2The military town on foot: bakery, cisterns, drill ground, monument
3
Rain, station by station
Mean annual precipitation around Orjen and down the coast
Crkvice takes more than three and a half times Dubrovnik’s rain, and half again what falls on Risan — eight kilometres away in a straight line and a thousand metres lower. In 1937 the gauge here read 8,036 mm.
Station series tabulated in en.wikipedia, Orjen (mm/year); 1961–1984 for the four Montenegrin stations, 1931–1960 for Trebinje and Dubrovnik
The plateau emptying out
People living in Krivošije, seven villages on 114 km²
The plateau that paid nobody
Venice, Vienna and the Sultan all drew Krivošije inside their borders. From about 1710 until 1882 none of them collected a tax or a conscript here. Widths are to scale.
Sea level to the wettest village in Europe
Five kilometres along the water, then twenty-six up
SRTM 30 m elevations read at seventeen equal points along the 31.5 km drive, measured on the OSM road network. The road leaves the sea at the Lipci roundabout, 4.9 km west of Risan, climbs 18.3 km on the M-8, dips to about 630 m across the karst, then covers the last 8.2 km on a local road. The village node reads 1,120 m here; en.wikipedia gives 1,092 m for the village and the Dinarsko gorje gazetteer 940 m for the site of the rain gauge. Above Crkvice the regional road to Orjensko sedlo, at 1,594 m, is not asphalted.
Crkvice: uporedite sve hotele
Pretražite hiljade hotela i apartmana sa aktuelnim cijenama.
Crkvice itself has no line in the census. Kotor’s settlement register counts Dragalj (46 people in 2023) and Ledenice (13), and nobody at all in Han, Knežlaz, Malov Do, Unijerina or Zvečava — but in 2011 and again in 2023 it lists no Crkvice, and en.wikipedia calls the village “nowadays virtually uninhabited”.
Dinarsko gorje, Krivošije; the 1953 and 2018 figures are also in en.wikipedia, Krivošije (2018 is an estimate, not a census)
Dinarsko gorje, Krivošije; en.wikipedia (Krivošije; Krivošije uprising; Fort Vrmac). Sovereignty on paper changed hands more often than the band shows — Venice fell in 1797, France held the plateau from 1807, Montenegro from 1813, Austria again after the Congress of Vienna in 1814 — but the free territory these sources call Kneževina Krivošije outlasted all of them on the ground.
Crkvice su visoko na obronku Orjena, oko 940 m iznad Bokokotorskog zaliva. Prilaz je spor uspon uskim putevima kroz krečnjački predio iza Risna, a promjena u odnosu na primorje je nagla.
Zašto su Crkvice poznate?
Po vremenu. Drže evropski rekord po godišnjoj količini padavina, u prosjeku preko 4.900 mm godišnje, a u izuzetnim godinama i mnogo više — jedno od najkišovitijih naseljenih mjesta na kontinentu.
Zašto tu pada toliko kiše?
Topao i vlažan vazduh koji s Jadrana ide u unutrašnjost udara u orjenski zid i istovari sve što nosi. Zima donosi snijeg koji se mjeri u metrima, a nanosi su nekad sedmicama odsijecali naselje od obale.
Živi li neko tamo?
Tek nekoliko sezonskih stanovnika. Austrougarski inženjeri su krajem 19. vijeka probili vojni put preko ovih visova i sagradili kasarne, a uz njih je narasla i civilna zajednica. Ostale su kamene kuće bez krova, čatrnje i zarđali kosturi vojnih objekata.
Može li se posjetiti?
Dolazi se pješke. Crkvice su usputna tačka planinarima koji prelaze Orjen između grada iznad Kotora i viših vrhova, a ruševine su pamtljiva pauza u dugom danu — tihe, vlažne i nalik ničemu drugom u Crnoj Gori.
Šta treba ponijeti?
Vodu, hranu i toplu odjeću bez obzira na prognozu, jer sadržaja nema nikakvih. Od kasnog proljeća do rane jeseni je upotrebljiv period; van njega magla, kiša i snijeg mogu potpuno zatvoriti zaravan.
Ima li aerodrom u Crkvicama?
Ne — najbliži je aerodrom Tivat (TIV), 41 km putem.
Crkvice – Dragalj: koliko je kilometara?
7,4 km putem, oko 14 min vožnje.
Koliko je bezbjedno u Crkvicama?
Britansko Ministarstvo inostranih poslova (FCDO) nema upozorenje protiv putovanja u Crnu Goru; svoje smjernice je posljednji put revidiralo 13. avgusta 2026. To je njihova procjena države u cjelini, ne naša i ne ocjena o ovom gradu, pa je pročitajte sami prije puta. Broj za hitne slučajeve u Crnoj Gori je 112.
A kilometre west from Kom to Stražnik at 1,225 m — a compact hexagon, named after the layered limestone its serpentines are cut into
4Stražnik was the one fort in the Boka system built for daylight, through windows and a glazed opening in the roof; the panorama runs from Herzegovina to Grahovo polje to Lovćen
5The military cemetery, ten minutes’ walk from the camp, where 200 Italian prisoners of the influenza year lie
6Back down the way you came, or on up the unasphalted road toward Orjensko sedlo at 1,594 m
A full day outdoors and most of it uphill. Take the forecast seriously: this is the wettest inhabited place on the continent.
Gdje odsjesti — Crkvice
Risan
Najbolje za the base everyone actually uses — 1,899 residents, hotels and apartments on the bay, 31.5 km and 42 minutes below the village
Dragalj
Najbolje za the nearest village the census still counts anyone in: 46 people in 14 households, 12.6 km along the karst
Herceg Novi
Najbolje za the nearest town with a real choice of rooms: 30 km, but 66 minutes of it, most of that on the unpaved old Austrian road over the plateau
Ko posjećuje Crnu Goru
Udio noćenja stranih gostiju, 2025.
MONSTAT · 2025
U svjetskoj štampi
Crkvice reaches the Montenegrin press every few years, usually as the same story told again: the wettest place in Europe, with a dead town inside it.
2014
Vijesti“Tvrđava Boka odolijeva vremenu” — Siniša Luković on the fortress system built between 1838 and 1914, whose third phase concentrated on Krivošije. The Crkvice camp, he writes, held six to seven thousand men, with a bowling alley, a ski slope and its own generator. 31 August.
2017
Boka NewsDon Anton Belan on the camp’s Catholic church of the Assumption, built in 1895 and pulled down from about 1955, with the 1956 letters about its missing altar slab. 26 November.
2022
RTCG“Putovanje u prošlost: Vojni grad Crkvice” — Ozren Zogović walks the FORT-NET thematic trail panel by panel: the cisterns, the bakery, the two forts, the military cemetery. 30 October.
2024
VijestiThe fifth “Svi na Crkvice” day, run by Kotor’s tourist organisation and the municipality, with guided walks up to Stražnik and Kom. 11 August.
All four items were opened at the outlet. The RTCG piece is the fullest account of the camp in circulation; a fifth, the road-repair notice Vijesti ran on 10 September 2024, is the reason the Crkvice–Orjen Sedlo road is passable at all.
1882
U međuvremenu — 1882
The year the free plateau ran out
Krivošije,1882: Austrian control is reimposed after a second rising against conscription. The plateau had recognised nobody’s authority, paid nobody’s tax and served in nobody’s army for some 170 years.
Crkvice —Vienna answers with a town rather than an argument. Feldmarschalleutnant Stjepan baron Jovanović directs a fortification programme across Boka, and more than 150 buildings go up on waterless karst above Risan: hotel, hospital, bakery, cinema, tennis courts, a bowling alley, a rifle range and a football ground with stands for a thousand.
Fort Kom,1882 and 1883: a three-level barracks under an artillery platform, to Colonel Karl Wahlberg’s standard design, held by three officers and fifty-nine men. Its job was the roads onto the plateau from the north and east.
Vienna and Berlin,20 May 1882: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy sign the Triple Alliance. In March, Serbia had been proclaimed a kingdom and Robert Koch had named the tuberculosis bacterium; in September Edison lit a square mile of lower Manhattan from Pearl Street.
Glasovi
“They bent their necks looking at the sky — in summer waiting for rain to save them from the drought, in winter waiting for it to stop.”
Lokalna legenda
Why the plateau is called Krivošije
“Although it is a mountain with a great deal of rainfall, Orjen is a mountain without springs.”
The FORT-NET panel on water, via RTCG
Hence twelve cisterns for the garrison, two of them large, and drinking water carried up or melted from snow kept in pits.
Crkvice kroz godinu
janSveti Jovan — 20 January — the krsna slava of the Krivošije brotherhoods, kept in the house rather than the square, in the middle of the rain season
avgSvi na Crkvice — Kotor’s tourist organisation brings a day of guided walks to Kom and Stražnik, archery and music up to the plateau; the fifth edition ran in August 2024. August here is often rainless end to end, and the fire risk peaks with it
novThe wettest month — November averages 714 mm at the Crkvice gauge — more than three times Dubrovnik’s November — and the Orjen literature reports late-autumn storms dropping 2,000 mm in a few days
