Thirty-three people live in Njeguši. The field around it gave Montenegro its dynasty and its protected ham — twenty-five hairpins above the Bay of Kotor.
Njeguški er en fjellby som ligger mellom Mount Lovćen og Bay of Kotor, kjent som fødestedet for Petrović-Njegoš-dynastiet som styrte Montenegro i århundrer. Bygda er like berømt for sine kulinariske tradisjoner, og produserer Montenegros fineste røkt skinke (njeguški pršut) og håndlaget ost, lagret i fjellluft. Besøkende passerer gjennom på den historiske veien mellom Kotor og Cetinje, og stopper for å smake på lokale delikatesser på familiestyrte veikiosker med vidstrakt utsikt over bukten.
Bilder fra Njeguši
The field, hamlet by hamlet
Residents by settlement in Njeguško polje, 2023 census
Two hundred and fourteen people across the five hamlets that still carry a published number. Dugi Do is marked “z” — the statute suppresses any figure under ten — and Majstori and Žanjev Do are recorded with no inhabitants at all. In 1927 the tribe counted 450 households.
MONSTAT 2023 census, settlement level
Hvem besøker Montenegro
Andel av utenlandske gjesters overnattinger, 2025
MONSTAT · 2025
Hvem bor her
Folketellinger, Njeguši kommune
Njeguši is one settlement in a field the tribe once filled: 450 households in 1927, across the villages of the polje and the hamlets above and below it. Where six households make a village the line jumps — 17 people in 2003, 35 in 2011, 33 in 2023.
The field that supplied the rulers
What changed here over five centuries is which of the field’s own families led the country. Widths are to scale: the Petrović vladikas of Njeguši held Montenegro for 155 years.
sr.wikipedia (the Njeguši tribe; the Cetinje–Njeguši–Kotor road) · en.wikipedia (Petrović-Njegoš dynasty, Principality of Montenegro, Lovćen).
Twenty-five hairpins
The Kotor road: sea level to the Krstac saddle, then down onto the field
Josip Šilović Slade, an engineer from Trogir, laid out the first cart road in Montenegro between 1878 and 1884: 36.3 km from Kotor to Cetinje, at most five metres wide, climbing from one metre to nearly a thousand on twenty-five 180º turns, none of them steeper than 8%. Profile sampled on SRTM 30 m at 21 even points along the 20.9 km to Njeguši, plus the Krstac saddle at 944 m.
A day on the road
Njeguši keeps the hours of the Kotor road — under the 2026 order, from 25 May to 15 October, the serpentines run one direction at a time
09:00Njeguši → Kotor is prohibited from 08.00, so the morning traffic on the hairpins is all climbing
14:00for one hour the Krstac–Trojica section is closed in both directions
16:00the birth house in Erakovići shuts at five, 11 April to 15 November
1813
I mellomtiden, i 1813
The year the poet was born in the field
Njeguši,13 November 1813: Radivoje “Rade” Petrović is born in Erakovići, in the house his uncle Petar I had built in 1779 — the middle of Tomo Petrović and Ivana Proroković’s five children, his mother from Mali Zalaz on the field’s northern rim. At twelve the monks at Cetinje teach him to read and write; at sixteen he is Prince-Bishop of Montenegro; he is dead at thirty-seven, having written Gorski vijenac.
The Boka —the same year Petar I, the ruling vladika and also born at Njeguši, declares the Bay of Kotor united with Montenegro. By 1815 the Austrian Empire has annexed the bay into Dalmatia, and no cart road connects the field to it until 1884.
Leipzig,16–19 October 1813: some 560,000 soldiers meet at the Battle of the Nations, the largest engagement of the Napoleonic wars, and Napoleon loses Germany.
London,28 January 1813: T. Egerton of Whitehall publishes Pride and Prejudice in three volumes.
Stemmer
“At Christmas the revelry here was unrestrained. The sausages hanging over a weak hearth fire went onto the flames; in the next house the crockery, the benches and a window were broken, and nobody was drunk. Bowls, soap and cakes were carried off, eaten or given to poorer houses — and nobody was angry or grudged the damage, because it was held that God would repay it.”
Pavle Rovinski, Russian ethnographer of Montenegro
Translated from the summary of Rovinski’s account of Christmas at Njeguši in the settlement’s Serbian Wikipedia article, which cites Ровински (1998), p. 126.
“Njeguši, from Njeguš — the personal name, of the same root as Njegomir and Njegoslav.”
Konstantin Jireček, historian of the medieval Balkans
Jireček’s derivation, set against Ilija Ruvarac’s older reading, which took the name from a founder called Njeguš appearing in a Latin charter of about the year 1000 as Negusius Podcupica. Both are given in the Serbian Wikipedia account of the tribe.
Sammenlign alle hoteller i Njeguši
Søk blant tusenvis av hoteller og leiligheter med oppdaterte priser.
Njeguši er en landsby på Lovćen-platået på rundt 900 moh., ved den gamle veien mellom Kotor og Cetinje. Det er omtrent 45 minutter opp serpentinene fra bukta, inne i Lovćen nasjonalpark, og består av noen få steingrender rundt et grønt karstjorde.
Hvorfor er Njeguši kjent?
Av to grunner: det er stamlandsbyen til Petrović Njegoš-dynastiet som styrte Montenegro, og den har gitt navn til landets mest kjente spekeskinke. Petar II Petrović Njegoš, fyrstebiskop og dikter, ble født her i 1813.
Hva er njeguški pršut?
Skinke saltet, røkt over bøk og deretter lufttørket i trekken som stryker over platået — møtet mellom havluft og fjelluft får æren for smaken. Den serveres i papirtynne skiver, gjerne med den lokale osten i olje og et glass rakija.
Kan man besøke Njegoš' fødehus?
Ja. Familiehuset i landsbyen er åpent som et lite museum, med tidsriktige rom og gjenstander knyttet til dynastiet. Det er beskjedent, og nettopp det er poenget: det viser hvor enkelt Montenegros herskere faktisk levde.
Er kjøreturen opp verdt det?
Veien fra Kotor er like mye attraksjonen som landsbyen — tjuefem hårnålssvinger med bukta som åpner seg under i hver eneste. Den er smal og langsom, og kjøres helst oppover fra Kotor, slik det meste av trafikken også går.
Hvor lenge bør man stoppe?
En time eller to. Spis, se huset, gå ut på jordet, og fortsett så til Cetinje eller opp til Njegoš-mausoleet. De fleste kombinerer det med Lovćen på én dagstur fra kysten.
Har Njeguši flyplass?
Nei — den nærmeste er Tivat lufthavn (TIV), 23 km unna langs vei.
Hvor langt er det fra Njeguši til Cetinje?
9,8 km langs vei, omtrent 16 min med bil.
Er Njeguši 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 Njeguši — les den selv før du reiser. Nødnummeret i Montenegro er 112.
Den lokale tallerkenen
Njeguški pršut
Montenegro registered the name in 2016, and the registration is a recipe: a bone-in pig leg with the skin and the fat under it, dry-salted with sea salt, smoked over the slow burn of dry beech, then dried and matured for at least nine months. The protected name belongs only to hams made in the Njeguši territory — the villages of the polje, the two Zalazi, Žanjev Do, Mirac, Majstori and the hamlets up to Krstac. “Mountain ham” on a menu is a description, not the designation.
Hvor The family konobas along the old Kotor road, on the field itself
2023 census, Njeguši settlement — 61 people lived here in 1948
1435
Grunnlagt
the Njeguši in the Venetian archives, at a strength of 400 houses
901 m
Høyde over havet
the floor of Njeguško polje, measured at the village on SRTM
23 km
Flyplass
Tivat (TIV) by road, half an hour down — Podgorica (TGD) is 55 km
1952
Parken
Lovćen national park, 62.2 km² — the village lies inside it
MONSTAT, Broj stanovnika po naseljima, Popis 2023 · sr.wikipedia (Njeguši; the Njeguši tribe) · en.wikipedia (Lovćen) · road distances measured on OpenStreetMap data, elevations on SRTM 30 m
Hvor lang tid trenger du i Njeguši?
Noen timer
1Up from Kotor on the R-1 — twenty-five hairpins, four metres to nine hundred, and in season the climb is barred after 14.00
2Njegoš’s birth house in Erakovići: a National Museum unit, 09.00–17.00 from 11 April to 15 November
3Pršut and cheese at a konoba on the field
4Velika Gospođa, the tribe’s cathedral church and the largest in the polje
Two hours, and most of it is the drive — which is the point.
En hel dag
1Kotor early, before the coaches reach the walls
2The serpentines up to the Krstac saddle, 944 m
3Njeguši: the birth house, then a long lunch on the field
4Jezerski vrh at 1,657 m and Meštrović’s marble mausoleum, finished in 1974
5Down the eastern side to Cetinje, 21 km on
The classic crossing of the mountain — coast to old capital, with Njeguši as the hinge.
Hvor bo i Njeguši
Njeguško polje
Best for waking in the field itself — Erakovići (93 residents) and Raičevići (52) are the two hamlets with more than fifty people left, and both lie inside the protected pršut’s territory
Lovćen national park
Best for the park’s own bungalows and tent pitches inside the boundary, €30 and €3 a day on its price list
Cetinje, 21 km east
Best for the old royal capital — hotels, museums and dinner, half an hour on the road rebuilt in 2018
Kotor, 21 km down
Best for the bay and the sea, with the whole climb still ahead of you in the morning
