Ulcinj is the last town on the Montenegrin coast before the Albanian border, and it does not feel like anywhere north of it. The old quarter sits on a rock straight above the water, Albanian is heard as often as Montenegrin, and a few kilometres south the shoreline stops being pebble and cliff and turns into an unbroken run of sand. This was once a famous and powerful pirate centre with a centuries-old tradition, and enough of it survives in the stonework that entering the walls of Stari Ulcinj still pulls you backwards in time, past old towers, stairs, windows and houses stacked on top of each other.
The old town on its rock
The fortified upper town is the reason most people come. Its foundations are far older than the walls you see: the site has been settled since antiquity, and the ramparts carry Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman work layered over each other. Venice held Ulcinj through the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, the Ottomans took it in 1571, and the town passed to Montenegro only in 1880, after the Congress of Berlin. Each of those centuries left something behind, which is why the lanes feel patched together rather than planned.
Inside the walls, the Balsica Dvore complex, named for the Balsic family who ruled Zeta in the fourteenth century, is one of the most representative buildings on this coast and now serves as exhibition space. Nearby stands a squat building that began as a church and was later converted into a mosque, and which today houses the town museum. The open space known as the slave square is a reminder of a harder trade. Nothing here takes long to walk, but the views keep stopping you: rooftops, then ramparts, then open sea.
Corsairs, and a story about Cervantes
Ulcinj's pirate era ran roughly through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when crews operating out of this harbour raided shipping across the southern Adriatic and the town became a market for captives taken at sea. Local tradition adds that Miguel de Cervantes was held here as a prisoner and that Dulcinea took her name from Dulcigno, the Italian name for the town. There is no proof of it, and you should treat it as a story the town enjoys telling rather than history, but it says something about how Ulcinj sees itself.
From Mala Plaza to Velika Plaza
Directly beneath the old town is Mala Plaza, a short crescent of sand that fills quickly in July. Walk or drive a little further and the options open up:
- Ladies' Beach, a small cove fed by a sulphur spring, long associated in local belief with fertility and still reserved for women.
- Valdanos, a deep bay north of town enclosed by olive groves, with a pebble shore and calm water.
- The beaches out towards Albatros, an easy walk from the centre and a good compromise between town and sand.
- Velika Plaza, the long beach running roughly twelve kilometres southeast from the edge of town to the mouth of the Bojana. The sand is fine and dark, the water shelves out slowly and stays warm, and the steady summer breeze has made it Montenegro's centre for kitesurfing and windsurfing.
Ada Bojana, the salt pans and the olive country
Where the Bojana splits before reaching the sea it encloses Ada Bojana, a triangular island of sand and reed that has been run as a naturist resort since the 1970s. Its other signature is the wooden fishing houses standing on stilts over the river, each with a large square net lowered on a frame, several of them serving the catch to visitors.
North of the town lie the Ulcinj salt pans, a vast grid of shallow basins built for salt production and now protected as a wetland of international importance. They are one of the most reliable bird sites on the eastern Adriatic flyway, with flamingos, pelicans and waders using them on migration. Inland, around Sasko Lake and the hills behind the coast, the landscape turns to olive groves, many of the trees genuinely ancient.
Getting there and when to go
Ulcinj is about twenty-five kilometres south of Bar and roughly eighty-five from Podgorica, reached by the coastal road that runs down from Budva and Bar. The nearest airports are Podgorica and Tivat; our Montenegro airport guide covers the transfer options. The Sukobin crossing puts Shkodra and northern Albania within an easy drive.
July and August are hot and busy, and the town is at its loudest. June and September give you the same sea with fewer people. Spring and late autumn are for the old town, the salt pans and the olive hills rather than swimming, and the birdwatching is at its best then. Give yourself two days if you can: one for the walls, and one for the sand, a burek somewhere along the way, and the long walk south towards the Bojana.
