Perast
Two hundred and thirty-seven residents, twenty baroque palaces and an island people built by hand
- When to go
- October 18° · 9 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- ½days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 9 km Tivat · 48 km Podgorica
- Right now
Our Lady of the Rocks is a man-made island off Perast. It grew around a reef where two sailors found an icon of the Virgin on 22 July 1452: after every safe return from sea they dropped a stone on the spot, for centuries, until there were three thousand square metres of dry ground. Every 22 July, in the evening, Perast still does it.
The ritual is called the fašinada, after the fascines — bundles of branches once laid around the stones to stop them scattering. At dusk the boats are roped into a single line, they leave the shore in silence, and the stones go into the sea around the island. It has never been interrupted, not even by wars, and it isn't staged for an audience — you watch from the shore rather than from the line of boats. If you're travelling in late July it's the one reason to bend your dates to a place rather than the other way round; the rest of the year the island itself takes fifteen minutes.
Perast itself has two hundred and thirty-seven residents and twenty eighteenth-century baroque palaces along a single seafront street. That much stone for that few people is explained by the town having been a seafaring republic in Venetian service, entrusted after 1654 with guarding the flag of St Mark. Nobody drives through the centre — the car parks are at both entrances, charged by the hour, and you walk from there.
Lunch costs more here than in Kotor because every terrace faces two islands. Fish is charged by the kilo, not by the portion, so ask what the piece weighs before you order; pasta and the dish of the day are the way to sit on the same terrace for less, and coffee is the one thing priced like anywhere else. If all you want is to sit and look, take a terrace at the far end of the promenade, away from the jetty — same picture, fewer people. In summer the car parks at the entrances fill by midday — arriving before ten solves that and the queue for the boat at once.
Guides for Perast
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Perast in 1 day
→Six stops fit into one morning, on foot from one end of the single seafront street to the other.
What to see in Perast
Our Lady of the Rocks
A church on a man-made island, rebuilt in 1722, with a museum beside it. Inside are sixty-eight paintings by Tripo Kokolja, among them a ten-metre 'Death of the Virgin', an icon from around 1452, and silver votive plaques left by sailors. The best-known object is an embroidery worked over twenty-five years, into which Jacinta Kunić-Mijović wove her own hair.
€2–3 (church and museum) · ~15 min (the island)
St George
The second island, two hundred metres on, and the only visible difference is that this one is natural. It holds a Benedictine monastery and the burial ground of Perast families, cypresses and a wall — and you cannot land on it. You look at it from the water, the shore or the bell tower.
free (viewed from outside) · none (viewed from a distance)
The waterfront and the palaces
One street along the sea, twenty baroque palaces, seventeen Catholic and two Orthodox churches for two hundred and thirty-seven people. Some palaces are hotels, some are still roofless with a tree in the courtyard, and that is part of the effect.
free
The boat to the island
It leaves from the jetty in the centre, continuously through the day in season, and the crossing takes five minutes. Return is €5, with entry to the church and museum charged separately, a few euros more. Before boarding, ask when the last boat back runs.
€5 · 5 min
The bell tower of St Nicholas
The highest point in town, and from it the whole layout resolves at once: two islands, the Verige strait three hundred and forty metres wide at its narrowest, and the road looping around the bay. Narrow wooden stairs, a token entry fee.
€1–2 (token fee) · 10 min
The Museum of Perast
The town museum in Bujović Palace on the waterfront, holding a collection run by MPI Museums of Kotor — the same institution that runs part of Kotor's own museums. €8 (€5 children up to 12, €5 groups of 10+), 15 Oct–15 Apr: Tue–Sun 10–16; 15 Apr–15 Oct: Tue–Sun 8–20.
€8 (€5 children up to 12, €5 groups of 10+) · closed Monday, all of January, Orthodox Easter, 1 May, 13–14 November
Two things you probably did not know
The island of Our Lady of the Rocks is man-made. For centuries sailors sank old ships and dropped stones on the spot until an island formed. The custom survives: every 22 July at dusk locals row out with rocks and tip them around the island.
In the eighteenth century Perast had a maritime school to which Peter the Great sent Russian officers to learn navigation. The town then had a hundred houses and a dozen palaces, and more ships than households.
Ready for Perast?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Perast — day trips or weekends.
Montenegro
→The Bay, the riviera or Ulcinj for the sea, Durmitor for July — choose the coast by its beaches and the north by the month
Serbia
→The north an hour away by train, the mountains three or four by car — Serbia divides by the time you have
Greece
→The north by road, the Cyclades by ferry, Rhodes by air — pick the region first and the island second
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Kotor, Herceg Novi and Cetinje
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Perast if you have been.
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