Ninety seconds on Sveti Stefan Island
The picture is taken from the road above and not on the island, and that has not changed now the hotel is open again. What has changed is the sand: two of the three beaches are public.
A fortified fishing village founded in the 15th century on a rocky islet linked to the shore by a narrow sand causeway. Twenty people were left on it by 1954, and the Yugoslav government moved them to the mainland and turned the village wholesale into a single hotel. The hotel reopened in July 2026 after five years shut; the classic view is from the coast road above.
The island is the view and the view is from above. Two laybys on the road over the village give the composition that sells Montenegro: a walled fishing village on its own rock, a causeway of pale sand, pines behind. Down at sea level the causeway divides two crescents of beach, and which of them a visitor may use is a question with a new answer. North of the isthmus the wooded Milocer estate runs down to the water, and the park around the old royal summer house is a short walk along the shore.
The village lived off the sea until the state emptied it, and Yugoslavia rented the result to visiting film stars. The current operator closed it in 2021 in a dispute with residents over access to the beaches on either side of the causeway, and the settlement that reopened it gave two of the three back.
Explore the rest of Sveti Stefan
The former summer residence of the Karadordevic royal family, its villa and park sitting on the headland between Przno and Sveti Stefan.…
Nearly two kilometres of sand and fine shingle immediately south of Budva, backed by the largest concentration of resort hotels in the…
A near two-kilometre crescent of sand and fine gravel east of Budva, backed by resort hotels, with calm shallow water and a promenade…