Kotor was an early inscription, and it might have profited from that ànd the earthquake it suffered from in the same year. It entered in the same year as Split and Dubrovnik, which it resembles. In 1997 this “row” of Adriatic coastal towns was extended with Trogir, another lookalike. It’s all a bit too much of the same to my taste. Kotor also is well on the beaten track for the average tourist, and large cruise ships do enter the Bay. There’s not much left to be discovered here.

Kotor's natural setting and its impressive city walls running high uphill like a miniature Chinese Wall are its best assets. The town within the walls is quite small, and I did not find any especially impressive buildings. I visited the interior of the Cathedral, very Romanesque and well-restored. All major buildings have been restored, and most of them were already up and running within 5 years after the earthquake. From photos, I tried to gather how bad the damage was, but it seems that though everything was hit nothing was really destroyed.

After I had seen all there is to see in Kotor Town, I hopped on a bus to Perast. This town lies half an hour north along the bay. In fact, it is situated exactly across from the isthmus that connects the Bay of Kotor with the sea. Here the views of the whole bay are better than at Kotor itself. Perast is just another historical Adriatic coastal town and does see its fair share of visitors.

After Perast I walked 3km more to the north, to a town called Risan which is also part of the WHS core zone. I hoped to get away from the tourists, but was overtaken by the "Kotor Hop-on Hop-off Bus"! Risan was called Risinium in Roman times, and from that period some mosaics are left. A 2 EUR-entrance fee gives you access to a covered area, where about 5 mosaics can be visited. Most of them consist only of geometrical motifs, some modelled after my favourite seafood: squid.