Montenegrinska kusten

Kostanjica

Seventy-seven people in a chestnut wood on the Ottoman side of an old frontier — which is why the oldest village is a hundred metres up the hill and the shore came later.

Kostanjica är en liten, lugn bosättning sträckt längs den inre Bay of Kotor mellan Risan och Verige-sundet, på sluttningarna mot Perast. Här störtar de dramatiska bergen rakt ner mot de stilla, mörka vattnen i Europas sydligaste fjordliknande bukt, och byn vetter direkt över mot Perasts tvillingöar, Our Lady of the Rocks och St George. Det finns lite att göra i konventionell mening, och det är poängen: Kostanjica är för resenärer som söker fred, ensamhet och den lugna takten för ett autentiskt strandsamhälle istället för resorts, barer eller folksamlingar.

Stanna i Kostanjica

2 boenden i Kostanjica

The five villages of the Risan bay

Residents by settlement, 2023 census, with Perast across the water for scale

Vilka bor här

Folkräkningar, Kostanjica kommun

Two hundred and fifteen people in 1948, and the count still climbed twice after that — 227 in 1953, 186 in 1981. Then 127 in 2003, 127 again in 2011, and 77 in 2023: two in five gone in twelve years. The heritage study traces the emptying in three waves — emigration to America after Boka seafaring collapsed, a reprieve between the wars when the Tivat arsenal was hiring, then the move to Tivat, Kotor and Herceg Novi after 1945. Of the five old hamlets up the hill, only Selo and Čelina survive even as ruins.

Two centuries on the Ottoman side

The frontier ran through this shore, and Kostanjica was on the far side of it. That is the single fact that explains the village: for two hundred years the families lived up the hill, and the water — the main road of the bay — held stores and boat shelters. Widths are to scale.

Dates from the protection study of Kostanjica’s built heritage (EXPEDITIO / Faculty of Architecture Podgorica, 2009, after Milinović, Nakićenović and Butorac), which puts Ottoman rule here at 1483–1684 and Venetian rule at 1684–1797. Other records date the conquest itself to 1481–82 and make the upper bay Herceg Stefan Vukčić’s before it; popular trail guides put Kostanjica on the Venetian side through those two centuries, which the study does not. The church date is Nakićenović’s — Milinović puts it later in the century.

A day on the shore road

One lane each way, two kitchens, and the view doing the work

07:00Perast sits almost due east, two and a half kilometres across the water — at the equinox the sun comes up behind it
11:00the island shuttles work the water off Perast, in plain view from the landings here
14:00Konoba Ribar opens at eleven and runs to midnight; the kitchen mid-strip starts at eight
19:00the study rates the view from here one of the finer ones in the gulf: Perast and its two islands in front, the Dobrota massif behind

Under tiden, år 1687

The year the frontier broke

Kostanjica — two centuries of Ottoman rule end here in the campaign of 1684 to 1687. Local tradition counts four fortified Turkish houses in the shore zone and a tower at the top of the village, tied into the Ottoman fortification at Verige; the farming families lived above them. For their part in taking the northern bay, Venice grants the men of Perast the estates from Risan to Herceg Novi, Kostanjica among them, and the village starts coming down to the water.
Castelnuovo: Venice opens the siege of Herceg Novi on 1 September under Girolamo Corner and takes the town on the 30th, ending two centuries of Ottoman rule at the mouth of the bay.
The Acropolis — the same war, the same month. On the evening of 26 September a Venetian mortar shell finds the Ottoman powder store inside the Parthenon; three hundred people are killed and the temple is wrecked.
London: Newton’s Principia is published in July, at Halley’s expense.

Röster

“A new carriage road was traced on the shore. It disturbed the authentic relation of the settlement towards the sea, which had until then been the main thoroughfare.”

Studija zaštite graditeljskog nasljeđa Kostanjice, on the shore road of the early 20th century

The protection study of the village’s built heritage, prepared by the Faculty of Architecture in Podgorica for the amendments to Kostanjica’s detailed urban project and published by EXPEDITIO in 2009. The trunk road followed in the 1960s and cut many of the village’s landings and boat shelters off from the houses that built them.

“He came to Naluka and there on the very shore made a strong and large house, in which until recently an oil mill and a prison with an iron door could be made out.”

Lokal legend

the shepherd Ćuzo and his treasure, as the village tells it

Vanliga frågor om Kostanjica

Var ligger Kostanjica?

Kostanjica, som också stavas Kostanjica, sträcker sig längs den inre Kotorbukten mellan Risan och Verigesundet, i sluttningarna mitt emot Perast. Kotor ligger 20–25 minuter bort med bil och Tivats flygplats ungefär en halvtimme.

Vad ser man från Kostanjica?

Rakt över vattnet mot Perast och dess två holmar, Vår Fru av klipporna och Sankt Göran. Ljuset morgon och kväll över den delen av bukten är skälet till att man väljer den här stranden framför den livligare.

Kan man bada där?

Ja, från klippor och små stenvikar, inte från en anlagd strand. Vattnet är djupt strax intill land och håller sig rent, och badplatserna är tomma även i augusti eftersom ingen strandservice drar dit folk.

Var bor och äter man?

På en handfull familjedrivna gästhus och hus vid vattnet, med fisk från de lokala båtarna. Hotell och barer finns i praktiken inte; måltider ordnas oftast med värdarna eller i grannbyarna.

Är det en bra bas för bukten?

En av de bättre tysta baserna. Perast ligger mitt emot och en kort bilväg längs stranden, Risan med sina romerska mosaiker några minuter västerut, och både Kotor och Herceg Novi väl inom en halvtimme.

Vem passar det för?

Resenärer som vill ha stillhet och utsikt snarare än nattliv, och som har bil. Vill du ha restauranger, affärer och liv på kvällen, bo i Kotor eller Herceg Novi och kom hit på besök i stället.

Kostanjica genom året

majThe first cherries — by villagers’ accounts fruit ripens earlier here than anywhere else in the bay — Kostanjica cherries reached the Kotor market on 1 May
juniSveti Ivan Krstitelj — the Nativity of St John the Baptist, 24 June — patron of the village church and of the place
juliCamping season — Auto Kamp Lara takes tents and vans from 1 July to 30 September; Autocamp Đule sits along the same shore
okt.U kostanje — the chestnut picking ran from 5 October to 5 November and the whole village turned out for it; the woods still run from the shore to about 200 metres up

Den lokala tallriken

Riba na žaru — fish off the grill

The fish kitchens on this shore run one menu: whatever came in that morning, over coals, with blitva, olive oil and lemon. The village’s other harvests are stranger. Chestnuts were the living here until the second half of the last century — the picking ran from 5 October to 5 November and every resident went. A drying house cured laurel leaf for the Ljekobilje works at Risan, and when the heritage study was written a small private still in the village was working laurel, wormwood and immortelle for the pharmaceutical trade.

Var Konoba Ribar, on the magistrala at the eastern end of the village, eleven till midnight; a second kitchen sits mid-strip and opens at eight

Kostanjica i siffror

1440
Grundad: 77
Invånare: 2
Kyrkor: 2
Öar: 340 m
Sundet: 3 km
Båten

EXPEDITIO and the Faculty of Architecture Podgorica, "Kostanjica: prirodno i kulturno nasljeđe" (2009) · MONSTAT settlement censuses 1948–2023 · Diocese of Kotor

Hur lång tid behöver du i Kostanjica?

Några timmar

1Park on the water side of the magistrala and walk the strip end to end
2The church of sv. Ivan Krstitelj on its plateau, and the Austro-Hungarian communal cistern below it — three catchment aprons, reservoirs under them, a fountain up a stairway
3Look up at the small attic windows: some are framed in chestnut, which the study calls a specificity of this village on a coast that frames its openings in stone
4Swim off the old public mulo, built in the 1950s below the church

Twenty minutes, one swim, and a village that explains itself in what it is built of.

En hel dag

1Climb one of the old stone stairways to Čelina — six buildings on a ridge at about a hundred metres, a quarter of a kilometre in from the shore, Perast on one side and Morinj on the other
2Three kilometres up the shore to Lipci, and the rock shelter above the village: stags, does and hunters painted in the Bronze Age
3Risan, 7.5 km around the head of the bay, for the Roman mosaic floors — the same antiquity as the mosaic found in 2006 at Naluka, at this village’s western edge
4Round to Perast, eleven kilometres by road to a town you can see from breakfast
5Back to Kostanjica for fish off the grill

The north shore in one loop: three-thousand-year-old stags, Roman floors, a Baroque town, and a hamlet to sleep in.

Var ska man bo i Kostanjica

The shore strip

Bäst för apartments in the houses between the road and the water, and Boka Gardens, a resort of villas and apartments whose 250 m pebble beach is for its own guests

The campsites

Bäst för Đule and Lara pitch on the shore at the western end of the village; Lara opens on 1 July and closes on 30 September

Morinj, 1.7 km west

Bäst för the cold spring water that runs into the bay, and Ćatovića Mlini, a konoba in old watermills

Risan, 7.5 km round the bay

Bäst för a small town instead of a hamlet, with Roman mosaics in it

Kostanjica

Stanna i Kostanjica

Vilka bor här

Two centuries on the Ottoman side

The year the frontier broke

Röster

Jämför alla hotell i Kostanjica

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Vanliga frågor om Kostanjica

Var ligger Kostanjica?

Vad ser man från Kostanjica?

Kan man bada där?

Var bor och äter man?

Är det en bra bas för bukten?

Vem passar det för?

Kostanjica genom året

Riba na žaru — fish off the grill

Utforska även i Montenegrinska kusten

Apartmani Kostanjica

Apartmani Danica

Kostanjica: En lugn by i Kotorbukten nära Kotor

Hyr du ut ett boende i Kostanjica?

Hur lång tid behöver du i Kostanjica?

Var ska man bo i Kostanjica

Klimatet i korthet

Budva

Kotor

Herceg Novi

Ulcinj