Ninety seconds on 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.
The 15th-century fortress at the southern tip of Budva's old town, holding a small maritime library, a stone terrace over the sea and views to Sveti Nikola island. It is ticketed separately from the walk along the town walls, which has its own entrance.
Three things lead off the courtyard that takes the ticket. Steps climb to the ramparts, which look down on the old town's roofs rather than along its lanes, and that change of angle is most of what the ticket buys. A stepped passage planted with flowers drops to an open cafe terrace with old cannon set along it, though the cafe itself tends not to open until the middle of the day. Between them sits one room of model ships and ships in bottles, a few minutes at most. The ruined church in the courtyard is what the whole complex was originally named for.
The complex was the Castle of St Mary before it was the citadel, rebuilt and expanded through the Middle Ages and reaching its final form under Austro-Hungarian rule. The stone barracks the Austrians left are the most prominent thing inside it, and they are what separates the citadel from the rest of the walled town. The ruins of Santa Maria de Castello, which the whole complex was named for, are still in there.
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