"Drsko je imala godina, koliko Kotor vekova..."/She was brazenly old, how many Kotor centuries...

I thought of the beginning of this music song, well known to everyone from the area of ​​our former country, in which the city of Kotor was sung, when, while zooming #worldmappin sticker, I caught the figure of a young, pretty girl in her early thirties 🙂

For more than two millennia (more precisely, the 22 or 23 century), there has been a city, today known as Kotor, in this area, at the foot of the high mountains, at the bottom of the Bay of Kotor.

Already in the 3rd century BC, the city, which was called Acruvium, was founded by the Illyrians.
After falling under the Roman Empire, and joining Dalmatia, the city became an important trade center.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city fell under the Byzantine Empire, and until the tenth century it was mentioned under the name Decateron.
For a while, the city was also the main seaport of the medieval Serbian state, during the reign of Nemanjići (1185–1371).
The golden age of the city occurred during the period when it was under the protection of the Republic of Venice (1420–1797), when the inhabitants decided to accept the rule of Venice, rather than being enslaved by the Ottoman Empire.
In that period, the city was called Cattaro, similar to today's name Kotor.

It was during this period that the city acquired its recognizable baroque and renaissance look. The Venetians significantly strengthened the city ramparts (which go up to the fortress of St. Ivan at 280 meters above sea level) in order to defend themselves against the Turks. These ramparts still exist today and are accessible to the public.

The idea of ​​climbing the ramparts fell through the moment I passed through the gate/archway and started up the stone steps.

Unfortunately, I was wearing inadequate footwear and every step on the polished stone blocks posed a danger of falling.

So I stopped, put a sticker on that place, took a photo of it (in the background I captured the already mentioned 22, 23-year-old girl) and returned to the center of the fortified city, to continue walking on safer ground. I will leave climbing the ramparts for another time.

Kotor survived several major Turkish sieges, but thanks to the ramparts and impregnable fortress in the mountain, it never fell under Ottoman rule.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Boka Kotorska experienced the peak of seafaring, and the people of Kotor became the owners of large merchant fleets that sailed throughout the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.
After the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, Kotor fell under the rule of several European powers.
First Austria-Hungary, then France with Napoleon's army, then Montenegro and again Austria-Hungary were the states that managed and further modernized this coastal city until World War I. Education, culture and military strength are being improved, so Kotor is becoming a serious naval power.
After the end of World War I, Kotor became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for a short time in World War II, the city was governed by Italians and Germans, and from 1944, after the end of World War II, until 2006 and the independence of the Montenegrin state, it was part of Yugoslavia (in several forms of that former state).

The city, which was largely destroyed in the great earthquake of 1979, was reconstructed and has been on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage ever since.

I visit Kotor every time I find myself in this part of the coast, sometimes for business, sometimes as part of a vacation, and I always enjoy walking through the narrow stone streets and Kotor squares.

I pass through the gates of the Kotor fortress (of which there are three), climb the ramparts and fortified walls, walk and look at old buildings, temples, churches and cathedrals, read historical facts on boards and names with the names of buildings and monuments, and almost every time I sit down in one of the restaurants and treat myself to a unique Kotor cake.

Several volumes of books could be written about this city, with such a rich history, but I will leave it to some historians and on this occasion I will share with you the photos I took while spending a wonderful day between the walls of the old city.

At some point I went outside the walls, tried to find another (third) entrance to the city, but when I reached the end of the wall on the north side of the city, which ends in a channel full of sea water, I remembered that this entrance was quite far away, so I immediately returned to the safety behind the walls, passing through the central gate with an interesting mailbox.

There, in the central, largest square "Weapon Square", just below the clock tower, there is an interesting pillar, which was used in the past as the "Pillar of Shame". Criminals were attached to him, those who deserved punishment and public condemnation.

There are many smaller squares in the center of Kotor, and one of the more interesting ones is the square of St. Trifun, where there is a cathedral of the same name from 1166, where the relics of this saint, the patron of the city of Kotor, are kept.

Sveti trifun crkva

I also walked to the square of St. Luke (patron of craftmen), where there is a church dedicated to this saint, and on the same square is the church of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, of whom there were many in this city throughout the centuries.

After spending more than half a day in the city, I headed for the resort where I was staying, and as I crossed the bridge with cannon holes on the south side of the city, through the Gurdić Gate, next to the spring of the same name, I looked once more towards the fortified walls and left Kotor, humming the lines of the song from the beginning:

"Čarobnjak je bila
U kosi je krila opojne mirise
Stalno se sećam
Kotoru vraćam da opet osetim
Kako usnama miluje
Kako prstima šapuće"