Two hundred people, a stream that comes cold out of the karst, and a two-hundred-year-old mill that became the best-known table on the bay.
Morinj ligger inbäddad i det innersta gröna hörnet av Bay of Kotor, på västra stranden mellan Risan och Kamenari färjösteget, där kalla källvattenkällor stiger upp från under bergen och möter saltet från Adriatic. Resultatet är ett ovanligt frodigt, skogsbeväxt landskap med bäckar, kastanjeträd och gamla vattenkvarnar, med den lilla Morinj-floden som slingrade sig ner förbi dem till havet. Det är en av de fredligaste platserna i bukten, känd för naturskönhet, härlig simning och enastående mat snarare än folkmassor eller nattliv.
Morinj, three neighbours along the same shore, and Perast for scale — 2023 census
Morinj holds more people than its next three neighbours together, and finishes thirty short of Perast. One of the two is on every itinerary in the bay; the other is where the itinerary stops for lunch.
MONSTAT, Popis 2023 — population by settlement. Gornji Morinj is suppressed, so Morinj is shown as Donji Morinj only.
Vilka besöker Montenegro
Andel av utländska gästers övernattningar, 2025
MONSTAT · 2025
Vilka bor här
Folkräkningar, Morinj kommun
Flat for fifty-five years — every census from 1948 to 2003 put Donji Morinj between 243 and 261 people. Then a fifth of them went in twenty years, to 207. MONSTAT suppresses Gornji Morinj’s count, so the hill half is not in that number. The neighbours along the shore are smaller again: Kostanjica 77, Strp 36, Lipci 17.
A reading village on a working stream
Morinj was never a port. It had springs, olives and seafarers, and in 1803 it put a school in a private house. Widths are to scale; the Austrian band takes in the French years, 1807 to 1814.
Municipality of Kotor’s adopted Morinj plan; Wikipedia (sr, hr) on Morinj; the Morinj court file.
A day at the stream mouth
Village hours, set by one kitchen and one beach
09:00the sea is coldest where the streams come out — freshwater springs under the surface keep it that way all summer
13:00the mills open at noon and take bookings online; turn up without one and drive on
17:00the slope behind the village takes the sun off the shore early
22:00the road empties; the stream does not
I världspressen
Morinj reaches the foreign press for one reason, and it is not the mills. By a decision of the command of the IX Naval Sector Boka, the Yugoslav People’s Army ran what its own paperwork called a "centre for the reception of prisoners" here from 3 October 1991 to 18 August 1992. Three buildings held Croatian prisoners of war and civilians; interrogation was done in others. Three of the men held there died in the centre and three more after they left it.
2018
tportalMontenegro has paid €1.43 million in court-ordered damages to former Morinj detainees, says the lawyer who acted for them.
2022
Radio Free EuropeA memorial plaque goes up at the site on 10 October; about fifty residents block the road over its wording, and the prime minister calls for it to come down.
The case ended with the Higher Court in Podgorica (Ks.br.19/12, 31 July 2013), confirmed on appeal (Kž-S.br.44/13, 27 February 2014): four former JNA reservists convicted of a war crime against prisoners of war, two to four years each. The Centre for Civic Education publishes the file in full.
1803
Under tiden, år 1803
The year the village opened a school
Morinj,1803: the village opens a school taught in the vernacular — the first in Montenegro, says Kotor’s adopted plan. It starts in the house of Pavle Tripov Matković and his wife Andrijana, moves later to Kirilo Milinović’s, and is joined to the provincial state school in 1871. A library follows in 1843.
The Boka —Venice has been gone six years and the bay is Austrian. The French take it in 1807 and Austria takes it back in 1814; the school outlasts all three.
Paris:Napoleon sells Louisiana to the United States, doubling the size of the country that buys it.
Serbia —Karađorđe’s uprising is a year away. Tomo Đurov Milinović (1770–1846), born here and taught his letters by a deacon in the village, will make his cannons — two of them in 1813, each in five pieces of 35 kg — and command his artillery at Deligrad.
Röster
“The plague did the killing — moriti — and the name it left behind was Morinj.”
Lokal legend
How the village got its name
“Among fire, water and wolves’ teeth I raise these pillars for the Orthodox people, 1848. Krile M.”
Inscription on the old school, Morinj
Built into the north façade, beside plaques to Tomo Milinović and to the first school in the vernacular. The ground floor holds the local council, the first floor the primary school. Transcribed in Kotor’s adopted Morinj plan.
Jämför alla hotell i Morinj
Sök bland tusentals hotell och lägenheter med aktuella priser.
Morinj ligger innerst i Kotorbukten, vid kustvägen mellan Herceg Novi och Risan. Det är omkring 20 km från Herceg Novi och ungefär lika långt från Kotor, inklämt i vrån där bukten smalnar av.
Vad är Morinj känt för?
Sitt vatten. Flera korta, kalla bäckar rinner ned från Orjen-massivet och når havet här efter bara några hundra meter, vilket förr drev kvarnar och fortfarande håller byn ovanligt grön. Mötet mellan sötvatten och salt ger Morinj dess karaktär.
Är Morinj värt en måltid?
Ryktet står inte i proportion till storleken, tack vare kvarnrestaurangerna bland bäckarna och den gamla stenen. Under säsong lönar det sig att boka bord — folk kör hit från andra sidan bukten just för att äta.
Finns det stränder i Morinj?
Små stenstränder längs strandkanten, lugna och grunda, där det kalla bäckvattnet märkbart sänker havstemperaturen nära utloppen. Det passar ett stillsamt bad snarare än en dag på stranden.
Är Morinj en bra bas?
För en lugn vistelse med bil, ja. Orten ligger ungefär mitt emellan Herceg Novi och Kotor, Perast och Risan är minuter bort, och färjan vid Kamenari gör Tivat och Budva-rivieran lätta att nå.
Vad kan man göra runt Morinj?
Gå längs bäckarna och kvarnruinerna, bada från stenstranden, ta bil eller båt till Perast och Vår Fru av klipporna, se de romerska mosaikerna i Risan, och använda byn som utgångspunkt för vandringar mot Orjen.
Hur varmt är havet i Morinj?
Från omkring 13 °C i februari till 25 °C i augusti. Den håller sig över 22 °C från juni till september — badsäsongen. Regionala normalvärden från stationen Herceg Novi, inte en mätning för staden själv.
Hur långt är det från Morinj till Lipci?
1,7 km längs väg, ungefär 4 min med bil.
Är Morinj säkert?
Storbritanniens utrikesdepartement (FCDO) avråder inte från resor till Montenegro; råden sågs senast över 13 augusti 2026. Det är deras bedömning av landet som helhet, inte vår och ingen dom över Morinj — läs den själv innan du reser. Nödnumret i Montenegro är 112.
Morinj genom året
juniBeach season — loungers and beach bars from June to September — entry free, about €4–8 a lounger, and the water stays cold at the stream mouths all summer
Den lokala tallriken
Grilled fish, in a mill that pressed its own oil
Morinj’s mills ground grain and pressed olives for the villages around it almost to the middle of the twentieth century. Four still stand. Three are derelict — one of them keeping its original mill machinery on the ground floor — and the fourth, the Ćatović family’s, was restored in 1994 on a property the family had held two hundred years. It took the BIG SEE Tourism Design Award in 2020 for creative story and identity.
Var Ćatovića Mlini, in the mill gardens above the shore road — noon to 22:30, reservations online; plus the restaurants and café on the beach at Donji Morinj
By tradition Dragomanovići — renamed for the plague
Morinj i siffror
207
Invånare
2023 census, Donji Morinj settlement
Trn
Floden
the mills were built where it comes out of the ground, and it reaches the sea inside the village
3
Kyrkor
sv. Jovan Bogoslov (16th c.), sv. Sava (1873) and sv. Tripun — an older sv. Jovan at Svrčak fell in the 1667 earthquake
1803
Öppnat
the school, taught in the vernacular; a library followed in 1843
Kotor region
UNESCO-listad
Kotor’s adopted plan puts Morinj inside the Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor, on the World Heritage list
7.2 km
Båten
to the Kamenari ramp and the crossing at Verige — Kotor is 24.7 km by road, Perast 12.7
MONSTAT, Popis 2023 (Donji Morinj settlement) · Municipality of Kotor’s adopted Morinj plan · Wikipedia (sr, hr) · road distances from mojaavantura.com
Viken i konturer
Orterna på sina verkliga positioner; vattnet ritat som ett band
Schematisk — inte ett sjökort.
Hur lång tid behöver du i Morinj?
Några timmar
1Park on the shore and walk out onto the grey pebbles where the stream comes in — the cold is immediate
2Follow the water inland through the mill gardens: millponds, channels, plank walks
3Out to the stone bridge over the Suvi potok, on the old road to Kostanjica
Twenty minutes gives you the whole village: a cold stream, four old mills, a warm bay.
En hel dag
1Swim early off Morinj beach, before the loungers go out — entry is free
2Risan and its Roman mosaic floors, round the head of the bay
3Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks, 13 km on
4Back for a long lunch at the mills — reserved before you left the house
5Up into Gornji Morinj, the half of the village on the hill, for the threshing floor and the terraces at Svrčak
Morinj works as a base rather than a stop: Perast is eighteen minutes down the road, Kotor thirty-four.
Bäst för the shore — apartments on the water, the pebble beach at the door, and the trunk road of the 1960s running between the two
Gornji Morinj
Bäst för the upper half of the village: stone houses, terraced ground at Svrčak, and at Gornji Berberovići a fortified house with defence towers on the corners of its courtyard
Naluka
Bäst för Kamp Naluka, the village campsite, near the river mouth
Kostanjica, 2 km on
Bäst för seventy-seven people, and the next village back toward the Kamenari ferry — quieter again
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