An Ottoman garrison town of 1862 that spent forty-three years called Ivangrad — with a thirteenth-century bishop’s seat two kilometres downriver at Budimlja and a 1,900-metre runway lying idle at its edge.
Berane er en livlig by i nordøstlig Montenegro som fungerer som inngangsport til den praktfulle Bjelasica-fjellkjeden. Liggende langs Lim-dalen tilbyr Berane besøkende en autentisk smak av montenegrinsk fjellkultur langt fra kystmengden. Byens hovedattraksjon er det middelalderlige Klosteret Đurđevi Stupovi, en åndelig og arkitektonisk skatt fra 13.
Berane & Đurđevi Stupovi
Bo i Berane
2 overnattinger i Berane
The municipality by settlement
Residents in 2023, Berane municipality
The town holds two in every five people in the municipality; nothing else in the valley reaches a quarter of its size.
The town emptied faster than four of the five villages around it. Budimlja, the one settlement that grew, is where the monastery stands.
MONSTAT censuses 2011 and 2023, settlement level
Hvem besøker Montenegro
Andel av utenlandske gjesters overnattinger, 2025
MONSTAT · 2025
Hvem bor her
Folketellinger, Berane kommune
Down a tenth since 2011 and a sixth since 2003. The pulp and paper mill built here in the early 1960s employed over two thousand people and was closed in 1989 — the first big plant to go in a still-whole Yugoslavia — the scheduled flights had stopped a decade before that, and the valley has been sending its young people to the coast and abroad ever since.
Budimlja, then a garrison
The district has been named since the middle ages; the town in it is 164 years old. Widths are to scale.
Monastery 1213, bishopric 1219; Bihor falls 1455; town founded 1862; liberated 16 October 1912.
A day in the valley
A working town’s clock, one bishop’s seat and a museum
09:00the Polimski museum runs 08:00 to 20:00, six days a week
12:00Đurđevi Stupovi is two kilometres out at Budimlja
15:00Jasikovac, where the Ottoman fort and the guns of 1912 stood
1961
I mellomtiden, i 1961
The year the town had an airline
Ivangrad,21 July 1961: JAT opens a Belgrade–Ivangrad tourist line flown by Douglas DC-3s, sold as the way to reach Bjelasica. Zagreb, Ljubljana and Podgorica follow.
The field —the airstrip had been there since 1935. Its runway is 1,900 by 45 metres of concrete and asphalt, with two grass strips beside it.
The name —from July 1949 the town was Ivangrad, after the partisan commander Ivan Milutinović (1901–1944). It went back to Berane in March 1992.
Elsewhere in 1961:Gagarin orbits the Earth in April; the Berlin Wall goes up in August.
Today —regular flights ended around 1976 and an early-1980s attempt came to nothing. In April 2023 the government signed a memorandum with a German operator — €45 million of a proposed €75 million for the field itself. Nothing has been scheduled yet.
Stemmer
“Đurđevi Stupovi was razed and burned five times during the Ottoman occupation.”
Metropolitan Amfilohije, at the monastery’s 800th anniversary, August 2013
Reported by Tanjug via Politika, 26 September 2021. The burnings are recorded in 1738, 1825, 1862 and 1875; the last levelling came in 1912, by Ottoman guns on Jasikovac, and the fifth rebuilding was finished in 1925.
Sammenlign alle hoteller i Berane
Søk blant tusenvis av hoteller og leiligheter med oppdaterte priser.
Berane ligger i Lim-dalen nordøst i Montenegro, mellom fjellene Bjelasica og Komovi. Det er et regionsenter med rundt 10 000 innbyggere, omtrent to og en halv time med bil fra Podgorica.
Hva er verdt å se i Berane?
Klosteret Đurđevi Stupovi fra slutten av 1100-tallet ligger like utenfor byen og er hovedattraksjonen. Selve byen har et polymuseum om regionens arkeologi og historie, samt elvepromenaden langs Lim.
Kan man stå på ski nær Berane?
Ja. Bakkene i Lokve og Cmiljača på Bjelasica betjener byen, med en sesong som vanligvis varer fra januar ut i mars. Området er langt mindre utbygd enn Kolašin — billigere og roligere, men med færre heiser.
Hvordan er landskapet?
Grønt og pastoralt snarere enn dramatisk — Lim-dalen er bred og oppdyrket, med Bjelasica på den ene siden og Komovi-toppene på den andre. Om sommeren er det turterreng med fjellhytter, og blant de minst besøkte delene av landet.
Hvordan kommer man til Berane?
Med bil fra Podgorica på rundt to og en halv time via Kolašin og Mojkovac. Busser forbinder byen med Podgorica, Bijelo Polje og de andre byene i nord. Det finnes en liten flyplass, men uten rutetrafikk.
Er Berane verdt et besøk?
For reisende som kommer seg forbi kysten, ja — først og fremst for Đurđevi Stupovi og som inngang til Bjelasica og Komovi. Det er en arbeidsby, ikke et feriested, og lønner seg for den som er interessert i innlandet.
Har Berane flyplass?
Nei — den nærmeste er Podgorica lufthavn (TGD), 108 km unna langs vei.
Hvor langt er det fra Berane til Podgorica?
92,6 km langs vei, omtrent 1 t 39 min med bil.
Er Berane trygt?
Det britiske utenriksdepartementet (FCDO) fraråder ikke reiser til Montenegro; rådene ble sist gjennomgått 13. august 2026. Det er deres vurdering av landet som helhet, ikke vår og ingen dom over Berane — les den selv før du reiser. Nødnummeret i Montenegro er 112.
Berane gjennom året
janSki-bus to Lokve — free, daily at 09:00 from the plateau in front of the town hall and back at 16:00 — from 14 January in 2026
julBerane Cultural Summer — free, 1 July to 8 August — over forty-five editions of concerts on the town square, theatre and literary evenings
julŠlaufijada — inner-tube races on the Lim and a fish-soup contest in Veliki park — a Saturday in late July, from 11:00
Den lokale tallerkenen
Burek
The tourist board lists the town’s buregdžinice alongside its restaurants and hotels, which tells you what Berane actually eats. Beside it, the local kitchen of Gornje Polimlje: priganice, kačamak, sheep’s cheese, pite and mantije.
Hvor Burek kod suda, Miloša Mališića 4, by the courthouse — working since 1967
Husein-paša orders a stone barracks built where no house stood
1213
Klosteret
Đurđevi Stupovi — from 1219 the fourth bishopric Saint Sava founded
~10,000
Nasjonalmuseer
objects in the Polimski museum, founded in 1955
9,923
Innbyggere
2023 census — two in five of the municipality’s 24,645
670 m
Høyde over havet
valley floor; Crna glava, the municipality’s high point, is 2,139 m
1,350–1,800 m
Skisentre
Lokve on Cmiljevica, 14 km up the Rožaje road — Montenegro’s second ski lift, early 1980s
MONSTAT censuses (2023 settlement figures preliminary) · Polimski museum · Berane tourist organisation · Radio Berane
Hvor lang tid trenger du i Berane?
Noen timer
1Đurđevi Stupovi at Budimlja — a single nave, a dome octagonal on the outside and round within, ancient stone reused in the fourteenth-century outer narthex
2The Polimski museum in the Dom trezvenosti, King Aleksandar’s gift of 1925
3Jasikovac, the Ottoman fort above the town
4Burek at Burek kod suda, by the courthouse since 1967
Two hours here covers a thirteenth-century bishop’s seat and ten thousand museum objects.
En hel dag
1The monastery first, while the valley is still cool
2The museum, then the town centre
3Fourteen kilometres up the Rožaje road to Lokve on Cmiljevica — 1,350 to 1,800 metres
4Back down for the evening
Berane is a base rather than a stop: the sights are small and the mountains around them are not.
En helg
1Saturday: Đurđevi Stupovi, then the museum and Jasikovac
2Sunday on Bjelasica — Pešić and Ursulovačko among its five glacial lakes, and the katuns around Suvodo
3In winter, the free ski-bus to Lokve at 09:00 from the plateau in front of the town hall
4In late July, inner-tube races on the Lim and a fish-soup contest at Šlaufijada
Two nights are for Bjelasica, whose ridge runs from Kolašin and Mojkovac down to Lubnice and Berane. The town is the working end of it.
Hvor bo i Berane
Town centre, left bank
Best for the main street, the museum and the small town hotels — everything on foot
Village homestays
Best for over forty registered seoska domaćinstva, several of them katuns: home cooking, walking, riding
Lokve, 14 km east
Best for the ski centre’s hotel on Cmiljevica, beside the Rožaje road — five kilometres of pistes when the snow comes
