The Albanian-speaking centre of Krajina: chestnut woods above the steep south-western shore of Lake Skadar, eighteen kilometres from Bar in a straight line and forty-two by road.
244 invånare
240 m över havet
TGD flygplats · 57 km
Prince Vladimir’s Krajina — a court and a church here by 1000
Ostroš är en liten bosättning i centrala Montenegro, belägen i det lantliga landskapet i landets inre. Byn är ett lugnt samhälle med traditionella stenhus och omgivande lantmark. Det tilltalar dem som är intresserade av att uppleva den autentiska, orörda karaktären av montenegrinsk byaliv.
Ostroš i siffror
244
Invånare
2023 census, Veliki Ostros settlement — 324 with Mali Ostros next door
240 m
Höjd över havet
the houses stand on the Rumija slope, some 230 m above the water
1016
Klostret
Kosara reburied Jovan Vladimir at Prečista Krajinska, 800 m east of the village
1983
Parken
the lake below became a national park — 370–530 km², the largest in the Balkans
57 km
Flygplats
Podgorica, 65 minutes by road; Tivat is 97 km and nearly two hours
MONSTAT 2023 census (settlement level) · Lake Skadar National Park · Prečista Krajinska after Mijović & Kovačević, Gradovi i utvrđenja u Crnoj Gori (1975) · road distances measured on OSRM
Här ligger Ostroš
De närmaste orterna kring Ostroš, på sina verkliga platser – Tuzi ligger ungefär 31 km bort fågelvägen.
Klimatet i korthet
Bästa restid: maj · juni · september
Krajina by village
Residents by settlement, 2023 census
No village on this shore reaches 250 people. Ostros is the district’s centre by about fifty residents, and by having the school.
MONSTAT 2023 census, settlement level
Which side of Rumija you live on
Residents by settlement, Bar municipality, 2023 census
Krajina, and who held it
Krajina was a political centre of Duklja: Prince Vladimir’s court stood on this shore, by tradition on the Kraljič hillock at Koštanjica, three kilometres west. Widths are to scale.
A day in Krajina
A village of 244 has no rush hour — it has a road
07:00the R-15 is the one road: Virpazar north-west, Vladimir and Ulcinj south
11:00the Prečista Krajinska bell tower stands 800 m east of the last house
15:00Murići, and the biggest beach on the lake’s Montenegrin side, are 17 km along the shore
19:00Rumija cuts the sunset short — the ridge is 1,594 m and it is west of you
Jämför alla hotell i Ostroš
Sök bland tusentals hotell och lägenheter med aktuella priser.
Bar municipality holds 45,812 people and almost all of them face the Adriatic. On the lake side of the ridge the census figures run to three digits.
MONSTAT 2023 census, settlement level
Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja; Mijović & Kovačević (1975); Nemanja annexed Duklja in 1186; the 1485 defter of the Sanjak of Scutari, established 1479; the district’s western half passed to Montenegro in 1878, its eastern half in 1912; RTCG, July 2026.
Ostros ligger på Skadarsjöns södra strand, i Krajinadistriktet i Bar kommun, nära gränsen mot Albanien. Det är omkring 40 minuter från Bar över kullarna och ungefär detsamma från Virpazar längs sjön.
Vad är Krajina?
Kullbältet mellan Rumija och sjön, och ett av Montenegros mest särpräglade hörn: övervägande albanskt och muslimskt, planterat med kastanj, oliv och frukt, och till stor del dolt från huvudvägarna.
Vad är trakten känd för?
Kastanjer framför allt. Lundarna i sluttningarna ovanför sjön försörjer landet och bär en höstskörd som fortfarande formar det lokala året, vid sidan av oliver, fikon och fisket i sjön.
Kan man komma ut på sjön härifrån?
Ja. Båtar går ut från stranden nedanför byn till sjöns södra arm, som är lugnare och mindre besökt än Virpazarsidan, med vasskanaler och bra fågelskådning.
Vad finns att se i närheten?
Öklostren Beška och Starčeva Gorica, båda medeltida och nåbara endast med båt, ligger i den här delen av sjön. Vägen längs stranden mot Virpazar är en av de finaste bilturerna i landets södra del.
Är Ostros anpassat för besökare?
Knappt, och däri ligger både lockelsen och förbehållet. Det finns några rum och konobor, och föga annat: kom med bil, ordna båt på plats, och räkna med en dagsutflykt snarare än en vistelse.
Har Ostroš en flygplats?
Nej — den närmaste är Podgorica flygplats (TGD), 57 km bort via väg.
Hur långt är det från Ostroš till Pečurice?
30,2 km längs väg, ungefär 36 min med bil.
Är Ostroš 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 Ostroš — läs den själv innan du reser. Nödnumret i Montenegro är 112.
1Prečista Krajinska — the ruined monastery and its five-storey bell tower, 800 m east on the R-15
2OŠ "Đerđ Kastrioti Skenderbeg", the district’s Albanian-language primary school: 16 children started first grade in the whole of Krajina in 2015
3The chestnut woods above the houses, protected by law
4The lake from the road, 230 metres below
An hour is the honest length of a stop here, and the monastery is the reason you stopped.
En hel dag
1Start at Virpazar, 34 km back up the shore
2The R-15 along the lake: the bell tower and Catholic church at Karanikići, the twelve wells of Boljevići, the olive terraces above Donji Murići
3Swim at Murići — 600 metres of sand, the biggest beach on the lake’s Montenegrin side
4Ostros and Prečista Krajinska in the afternoon light
5On south to Vladimir and Ulcinj, or back to Virpazar and over Sutorman to Stari Bar
The circuit is signposted "Između dvije čarobne obale" — between two magical shores — and has been open since May 2017. Drive it slowly: the €18m rebuild covers the road south of Ostros, not the one you came in on.
Var ska man bo i Ostroš
Murići
Bäst för the nearest real beds — four wooden bungalows and a restaurant under old chestnuts and olives, beside 600 m of sand, 17 km back along the shore
Virpazar
Bäst för the lake’s tourist village, 34 km up the R-15: guesthouses, a railway station, September’s grape festival
Bar & Stari Bar
Bäst för hotels and the old town — 42 km by road, south to Vladimir and then up the coast, though only 18 as the crow flies
Vilka besöker Montenegro
Andel av utländska gästers övernattningar, 2025
MONSTAT · 2025
Vilka bor här
Folkräkningar, Ostroš kommun
Veliki Ostros has lost two residents in five since 2003 — 416, then 332, now 244 — and Mali Ostros is down to 80. The emptying is older than the numbers: thousands of Krajina families left for Western Europe and the United States between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and the district as a whole fell from 1,963 people in 2003 to 1,555 in 2011.
I världspressen
Ostros reaches the press for two things: its chestnuts, and its road.
2017
CdMThe 11th Koštanijada draws several thousand people to Ostros on 20 November — honey, herbal teas, goat cheese and carp fresh from the lake on the stands.
2019
VijestiA travel column drives the Virpazar–Ostros–Stari Bar circuit of Panoramic Route 3 and likes everything about the Ostros leg except the road surface.
2025
Feral (Bar)The 17th Krajinska koštanijada opens in Ostros on 15 November, inaugurated by Bar’s deputy mayor and folded into the programme for the town’s liberation day on the 24th.
2026
RTCGPreparatory work starts on 17 km of the Ostros–Vladimir regional road: €15m before VAT and about €18m with it, contractor Putevi Bar, with bridge repair, a wider carriageway, retaining walls and landslide remediation.
Nearly seven years separate the complaint from the contract, and the contract covers the road south of Ostros, over to Vladimir in Ulcinj municipality — not the stretch back to Virpazar.
1016
Under tiden, år 1016
The year a prince came back to Krajina
Prespa,22 May 1016: Jovan Vladimir, ruler of Duklja, is beheaded in front of a church in the Bulgarian capital on the orders of Ivan Vladislav, the empire’s last tsar.
Krajina —his widow Kosara, daughter of Tsar Samuel, brings the body home and lays it in the church of the Virgin by Ostros, the one tradition credits to her. It stood there before him: her father-in-law Petrislav had already been buried in it. She was buried at his feet.
Constantinople:Basil II is grinding down what is left of the First Bulgarian Empire. It ends two years later.
England —Cnut the Great takes the throne after the death of Edmund Ironside, and Danish rule begins.
Ostros today —Prečista Krajinska is a ruin 800 metres east of the houses, on the R-15. Its five-storey bell tower, partly rebuilt, is the one part still standing; the relics have been in the Orthodox cathedral in Tirana since about 1995 and come back only for the saint’s feast day.
Röster
“He seemed to her sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.”
Lokal legend
The legend of Vladimir and Kosara
“Told to sink a well like the twelve-metre one Prince Vladimir dug at Ostros, the young man reached ten metres — so he dug twelve wells instead, and was accepted as a son-in-law.”
Lokal legend
The twelve wells of Boljevići
Ostroš genom året
sep.Grape Festival, Virpazar — 34 km up the shore: the grapes, wine and winemakers Virpazar is known for
nov.Krajinska Koštanijada — the chestnut fair in Ostros, run by the local community inside the programme for Bar’s liberation day; the 17th edition opened on 15 November 2025
dec.Days of Wine and Bleak, Virpazar — December on the lake: the best wine and the best song about wine are judged, and the ukljeva is eaten
Den lokala tallriken
Koštanj — the Krajina chestnut
Krajina counts more than twenty thousand chestnut trees and the forest is protected by law. The district is named for them twice over: the hamlet three kilometres west is Koštanjica in Montenegrin and Gështenjë in Albanian, and both words mean chestnut. The crop is gathered in autumn — cars park along the road through the woods — and part of it is exported.
Var The Koštanijada stands in Ostros each November: honey, herbal teas, goat cheese and carp fresh from the lake. Otherwise the restaurant at the Murići beach camp, 17 km along the shore, serves home cooking under the chestnuts and olives
