Kotor: The Adriatic's Most Dramatic Walled City

Kotor is one of those places where the setting does the initial work. The Venetian walls wrapping around the city and scaling 1,350 vertical meters to the fortress of San Giovanni aren't a background feature — they're the city's defining physical fact. From the water, approaching by ferry, they're stunning. From the top of the walls at dawn, with the bay visible below and no one else on the ramparts, they're something else entirely.

The city inside those walls is well-preserved in a way that feels earned rather than maintained. Romanesque churches, a Venetian clock tower, cats everywhere — Kotor has an official cat culture dating to the days when the ships needed mousers, and the resident cat population has full run of the old town. This is somehow not annoying.

The bay (Boka Kotorska) is the part most visitors miss because they don't rent a car or a boat. The villages around the fjord — Perast with its baroque palaces, the tiny church of Our Lady of the Rocks built on an artificial island — are each worth a half day. The drive around the bay takes two hours and passes through places that have been photographed exactly twice and still look exactly like they did when the Venetians left.

The hiking above the city is underrated. The trail to San Giovanni fortress can be done in 90 minutes from the old town and rewards with views over the entire bay. The Ladder of Kotor trail extends higher into the mountains above — a full day's effort that most visitors don't know exists.