Things to do
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Budva Old Town
By the end of one short loop you have crossed a maze of stone lanes, stood among three churches on one small square and looked down on the roofs from citadel ramparts above the sea.
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Jaz Beach
Long, with a shallow sea at the edge, Jaz gives small children an easy place to paddle and leaves stretches of free sand where you can spread your own towel instead of hiring a lounger.
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Archaeological Museum
The pieces that prove Budva is old are in this one house: over 2,500 years of finds, with much of the collection dug from graves outside the walls. Give yourself an hour.
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Becici Beach
Swim in a sheltered bay, then follow the seafront south to lunch. It gives you a whole beach day on foot, with a fishing village and a quieter beach strung along the same path.
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Mogren Beach
Two small sandy coves lie under limestone cliffs just west of Budva's old town. You walk there along the cliff and swim in very clear water, sheltered from the wind on three sides.
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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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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; a few dozen towels fill it in summer.
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Astoria Budva
Wake up inside Budva's walls. Astoria Budva is the only hotel in the Old Town, and its stone lanes and squares begin at your door.
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Avala Resort & Villas
One short stroll takes you from your room into the lanes of Budva Old Town, while the sea view runs out past the hotel's own beach to St. Nicholas Island.
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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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Dukley Hotel & Resort
Dukley Hotel & Resort puts you on the secluded Zavala Peninsula between Budva and Bečići, with direct access to three private beaches. Stay here if you want the beach below your room and Budva's old town within easy reach.
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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.
