Things to do
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Budva Old Town
Three churches stand on one square at the far end, one of them out on the point itself. The lanes are empty before eight and the loop takes about ninety minutes, so it fits either side of a beach day.
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Mogren Beach
The way in is a narrow cliffside path from the old town gate, ten to fifteen minutes on uneven ground that takes no wheels at all. Be on it before nine, because both coves are small and the crowd is not.
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Archaeological Museum
Four floors, and the archaeology stops after the third. Almost everything in the first three came out of the ground within walking distance of the door, which is the argument for going in rather than reading a board outside.
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Citadel of Budva
The citadel and the walk along the town walls are two tickets bought at two entrances, and this is the one at the seaward point. The other one runs along the top of the walls and is reached from the lanes.
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Church of St. John the Baptist
Five minutes on foot from the citadel if passing through the old town; adds little time and worth a quick look inside.
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Jaz Beach
A pebble beach 2.5 kilometres west of central Budva, running in two stretches of roughly 850 and 450 metres. It is larger and less crowded than the beaches in the town itself, and carries seasonal facilities rather than year round ones.
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Modern Gallery
Small and free; worth ten minutes only if already inside the walls and the current show appeals.
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Podmaine Monastery
An Orthodox monastic complex founded in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in the eighteenth, in the hills about two kilometres north of Budva old town. Njegos stayed and wrote here, and the frescoed upper church repays the short detour from the coast.
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Mogren Fortress
A coastal fort of 1860 on Spas hill above Mogren beach, about a kilometre west of Budva old town, built to command the approach to the bay. The shell is unrestored and open to the sky, and the walk up gives the best free view over the old town and the Budva riviera.
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Pizana Beach
A small pebble beach directly beneath the seaward walls of Budva old town, beside the Pizana restaurant jetty. It is central rather than secluded, with clear water and a view straight up at the fortifications; arrive early in summer, because a few dozen towels fill it.
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Budva Dancer
A bronze dancer on a rock below the old town walls, on the paved path around to Mogren, and the figure the town uses as its symbol. It is the work of the Belgrade sculptor Gradimir Aleksić and has stood there since 1965, modelled on Olga Kalivoda, then a fourteen year old athlete from Novi Sad. The local telling attaches it to a story about a girl waiting for a sailor.
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Church of St Sava the Sanctified
A small barrel-vaulted church on the ridge west of the citadel, above the sea, laid up in alternating courses of white and pink stone. Its founder's plaque records 1114 and the consecration is put at 1142, the oldest sacral building inside the walls. Fragments of Komnenian fresco survive. The dedication is to Sabbas the Sanctified, the Cappadocian monk once the town's patron, and not to the Serbian archbishop of the same name.
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Church of the Holy Trinity
The Orthodox church on the square, built between 1798 and 1804 once the Venetians had gone, under the metropolitan Petar Cetinjski. Banded white and red stone under red tile, a dome, and a belfry of three bells over the door. The iconostasis inside is what the church is worth stopping for.
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Santa Maria in Punta
Founded in 840 and the oldest church on the old town square, a single nave with a rectangular apse, set on a north to south axis the ground decided, not the liturgy. Benedictines served it first and Franciscans by the seventeenth century. It holds concerts and exhibitions now, and no services are said in it.
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Slovenska Beach
The main town beach, about 1.6 kilometres of seafront running east from the old town, stone and shingle mixed with sand and pebbles large enough to make the footing awkward. It works on concessions, each stretch run by the bar or cafe behind it, with sunbeds packed close and music along the strip in season.
