Perast
Perast – one of the loveliest places in Montenegro and under Venetian control for nearly 400 years. The houses that run by the waterside are toy town Venetian Gothic, with a homely grandeur that is the residue of a magnificent past.
For nearly half a millennium Perast was the muscle of Adriatic maritime strength, holding forth against repeated Turkish attacks when the rest of the Gulf had fallen.
The sailors of Venice and later Russia came to the nautical school here and learned the skills of Perasts’ mariners; its cartographers charted the coasts; its navigators steered the Venetian fleet at Lepanto and its engineers designed ports in the Baltic.
Down on the seafront, captains’ houses look confidently out to the entrance of the Gulf, and over the red tiled roofs the mountains ring the tranquil sea.
Perast is picturesque in the full sense of the word. You can see all of Perast in an hour or so, but you’ll probably want to stay longer.