← Boka Marathon·1 night

Perast: Two Islands and a Town of Twenty-Three Churches

A baroque town of three hundred people on the bay the marathon runs along, with an artificial island built by sailors one stone at a time and a boat out to it from the quay.

Duration1 night
Transit20 minutes by road from Kotor, 12 km north along the bay
DepartsKotor

After the Boka Marathon: Perast

The Route: Kotor → Perast (1 night) → Tivat Airport Logistics: 12 km north on the coastal road, around 20 minutes by car or taxi. Local buses along the bay stop on the main road above the town. Water taxis to the islands leave from the Perast waterfront. Marathon Month: December Duration: 1 night

Kotor ──(≈20 min, 12 km coast road)──> Perast
                                          │
                                   (water taxi, ≈10 min)
                                          ▼
                              Our Lady of the Rocks / St George

You run past Perast during the marathon. The course comes down the bay from Risan and the town is on the water to your right, which means you will have seen it at a point when you were not in a position to look. It is worth 12 km back up the road the next day.

Perast is a single street of baroque stone houses along the water, with something close to three hundred residents and twenty-three churches, which is the ratio a town ends up with when it spends two centuries as a wealthy Venetian naval outpost. There are no cars in the centre. The whole place is flat and about a kilometre end to end.

Our Lady of the Rocks

Two islands sit a few hundred metres offshore. St George is natural, with a Benedictine monastery and cypresses on it, and it is closed to visitors. Our Lady of the Rocks is the other one, and it is artificial: local sailors dropped a stone on the reef every time they came home safely, over centuries, until there was enough of an island to build a church on. They still do it, once a year in July, in a boat procession called the Fašinada.

The church on it has a collection of silver votive plaques left by sailors and an embroidered altar cloth that a local woman worked on for twenty-five years while waiting for one to come back, using her own hair in the later sections as her sight failed. There is a small museum attached.

Water taxis run from the Perast quay and take about ten minutes each way. In December they are weather-dependent and there are fewer of them, so you may need to wait or ask around at the waterfront.

The town itself

The Bujović Palace on the waterfront holds the town museum, covering Perast's naval history and the period when its sailors trained the Russian navy under Peter the Great. St Nicholas's church, on the main square, has a bell tower that can be climbed for the view down onto the two islands and along the bay.

In December a good proportion of the restaurants and guesthouses close. Several of the palaces have been converted into apartments and small hotels, including the Smecchia, and some of those stay open through the winter. Confirm directly before you travel: this is not a town where you will find a bed on arrival in December.

Where to Stay and Eat

Where to stay: The converted palaces on the waterfront are the reason to stay a night here, and they are affordable out of season. A room facing the water looks straight out at the two islands.

Where to eat: The waterfront restaurants serve fish from the bay and are the only real option. Check which are open in December, and eat earlier than you would in summer.

Getting Home

Tivat airport is around 30 minutes back down the bay. Kotor is 20 minutes away if you are returning there first. Buses along the coast road are frequent enough in daylight and thin out after dark.