Tiny Kotor is the latest victim of cruise ships

The beautiful medieval town in Montenegro is now in the same boat as Venice and Dubrovnik

FOR years it was touted as Europe’s best-kept secret, its ancient stone houses and encircling medieval walls blissfully free of the tourist masses that have smothered Venice and Dubrovnik.

But the tiny town of Kotor in Montenegro now risks the same fate as those more famous destinations.

From being barely known a decade ago, the walled citadel, a World Heritage site located on the shores of a dramatic fjord, is currently visited by around 430 cruise ships a year.

The old town, renowned for its wellpreserved 14th-century ramparts and Romanesque churches, is now almost entirely devoted to tourism.

Ana Nives Radovic, the head of its tourism organisation, said: “There are now 85 to 90 souvenir shops in Kotor. The city has completely changed in the last decade because of the cruise ship industry. Over the winter, our only book shop, which was an institution, was closed down. We have to be honest and say that the cruise ship industry is not the perfect type of tourism.”

As grocery shops, hairdressers, ironmongers and fruit sellers are closed down and replaced with knick-knack shops selling tourist tat, ordinary life becomes almost impossible – something long-suffering Venetians have often complained of.

Kotor also shares much of the appeal of Dubrovnik, both were trading outposts established by the Venetians, and in both towns the winged lion of St Mark, the symbol of Venice, still looms over stone gates and battlements.

A victim of its own beauty, Dubrovnik also attracted hordes of visitors after being used to film scenes in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

But Kotor, located 50 miles to the south, now shares many of Dubrovnik’s problems. Around 10,000 tourists arrive each day in summer, often leaving the old town packed.

Two years ago, Unesco threatened to revoke Kotor’s World Heritage status, warning that its appeal was being ruined by too many tourists and rampant construction. In response, local authorities imposed a temporary ban on construction.

Sandra Kapetanovic from Expeditio, a local architecture group that advocates sustainable development, told AFP: “Kotor was once known for being more authentic [than Dubrovnik], but now they’re in the same place.”

Montenegro is trying to strike a delicate balance between making money from tourism and ensuring that the very things that tourists come to see are not snuffed out in the process.

Paul Bradbury, a British journalist who runs the websites Total Montenegro News and Total Croatia News, said: “Cruise ships in Venice and Dubrovnik are classic cases of ‘overtourism’. Kotor is nowhere near that at the moment, and I think that the authorities are sufficiently aware of the dangers not to let that happen. I have been in Kotor in peak season when a cruise ship was in, and I have been in Dubrovnik. And Split. Give me Kotor every time.”

Tourism now accounts for nearly 25 per cent of Montenegro’s GDP.