Ninety seconds on Church of St. Nicholas
It is the only Orthodox church in Kotor holding services every day, so the hour a visitor gets inside is decided by the liturgy more than by the posted times. Entry is free and respectful dress is expected.
The principal Serbian Orthodox church of Kotor, completed in 1909 on the Piazza of St Luke, its twin towers rising over the north end of the old town. The iconostasis and the icon collection inside are the reason to look in beyond the facade.
One room, and almost all of it is the screen. The iconostasis separating the nave from the sanctuary is the central feature, painted by Franjo Ziegler at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the church was designed by the Croatian architect Kiril Ivekovic. The gold crosses on the towers outside were a gift from Russia, which is the clearest statement in Kotor of where this congregation was looking when it built. Twenty minutes covers the inside comfortably. St Luke's, older and much smaller, stands on the same square.
An Orthodox church stood on this square from 1810 until it burned down on Christmas Eve 1896. The present building replaced it.
Explore the rest of Kotor
Venetian fortifications encircling Kotor's old town, built between the 9th and 19th centuries and restored in recent decades; accessible…
Housed in a 17th-century Baroque palace in Kotor old town, the collection covers Adriatic naval history, sea captains' artifacts, ship…
A UNESCO-listed medieval walled city at the head of the Bay of Kotor, with a Romanesque cathedral consecrated in 1166 and fortifications…