Kotor City Walls & Fortress of San Giovanni

How to climb it without melting

Forget booking ahead — there’s no online ticket and no fast-track for this one. In peak season you simply pay about €15 in cash at a booth on the lower walls; out of season nobody’s there and it’s free. So the planning is all about timing, not tickets. Start before 8am. The path is roughly 1,350 steps up worn medieval stone with almost no shade, so by mid-morning it’s both furnace-hot and clogged with cruise passengers who’ve just walked off five or six ships. Go at dawn and you get cool air, an empty path, and the clean light that makes the photo down over the red roofs work.

One thing people get wrong: they treat the booth route as the only way up. There’s a quieter unmarked back path from the Špiljari hamlet behind the hill that joins the ramparts higher up — it sidesteps the booth and the crowds, though it’s rougher underfoot. Either way, bring a litre of water and wear trainers, not the sandals you wore to the Old Town; the stone is uneven and slick, and the descent is slower than the climb.

Worth the climb? The honest take

Climb in June or September rather than the July–August peak, and on any day go at opening or in the last hour before the booth shuts around 8pm for the evening light. Allow two to three hours round trip with photo stops — there’s no lift and no shuttle, so the only way down is back on your own legs. If the heat or the steps are genuinely too much, the lower Church of Our Lady of Health, about halfway up, gives a respectable view for a fraction of the effort.

This is the best view in Montenegro and one of the rare big climbs that earns every step. Pair it with the Old Town early or after 5pm once the ships have sailed, and save Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks for a separate half-day rather than stacking everything into one exhausting morning.