Stara varoš

Podgorica · founded 1474

Five centuries, in a ten-minute walk.

The Ottoman old town of Podgorica — cobbled lanes, stone houses with timber balconies, two old mosques, Sahat Kula from 1667 and the ruined fortress where the rivers meet. Our front door opens onto it.

The quarter

The oldest part of the city, still lived in.

When the Ottomans took the settlement at the confluence of the Ribnica and the Morača in 1474, they built the town that is now called Stara Varoš — a dense quarter of narrow lanes, walled courtyards and stone houses laid out for shade and for privacy.

It survived the bombing that flattened most of Podgorica in 1944, which is why the old street plan, the two minarets and Sahat Kula are all still standing. Today it is the quietest neighbourhood in the city centre — a minute from the bustle and without the traffic: a bazaar at one end, the river gorge at the other.

Hotel Bojatours sits inside it, at Kralja Nikole 10 — which means everything on this page is within a few minutes of your room. The Risto Stijović Gallery, in the sculptor's own house, is forty metres up the lane.

1474Ottoman foundation

The town is established at the meeting of the Ribnica and the Morača.

1667Sahat Kula raised

The Hadži-Paša family builds Sahat Kula, which still marks the square that carries its name.

1944The city is bombed

Podgorica is largely destroyed; Stara Varoš keeps its lanes and its landmarks.

1974Risto Stijović

The sculptor dies in the house on Braće Zlatičanin; it later opens as his gallery.

TodayA living quarter

Restored cobbles, working mosques, cafés — and fifteen rooms at number 10.

Landmarks

What to walk to first.

Six things worth the walk — none of them more than ten minutes from reception, and the first just forty metres away.

01
40 m from our door

Risto Stijović Gallery

The sculptor's own house

Forty metres up the lane from our door stands the house where Risto Stijović (1894–1974), Montenegro's foremost modern sculptor, lived and worked — now a public gallery devoted to his work.

His figures in walnut, stone and marble — women, birds, owls — are shown in the rooms he knew, behind a courtyard of old stone walls and a new travertine wing. It is the closest thing to a museum you will find on this street, and our nearest neighbour.

40 m · under a minute
02
1667 · Ottoman

Sahat Kula

The clock tower, 1667

The tallest thing the Ottomans left standing in Podgorica, raised around 1667 by the Hadži-Paša family and still keeping watch over the square that carries its name.

Twenty metres of dressed stone with a single arched belfry at the top — the one silhouette every visitor to Stara Varoš photographs first.

3 min on foot
03
The old quarter

Cobbled lanes

Kralja Nikole & around

Stara Varoš keeps its Ottoman street plan: narrow lanes that bend rather than cross, stone walls, timber gates and low houses that turn their backs to the street and open onto private courtyards.

Our door sits on Kralja Nikole — step out and the whole quarter unfolds in a few minutes' walk, all of it flat and all of it quiet.

At the door
04
11th century

Ribnica Fortress

Where the rivers meet

The oldest stones in the city: the ruined walls of the medieval fortress above the point where the Ribnica flows into the Morača — the Sastavci.

A Roman-era bridge, terraced paths and open stone platforms make it the quietest place in Podgorica to sit with the water below you.

6 min on foot
05
Skenderbegova

The old mosques

Starodoganjska & Osmanagić

Two minarets still rise over the rooftops of Stara Varoš. The Starodoganjska mosque dates to the 15th century; the Osmanagić mosque, with its slender white minaret, to the 18th.

In the courtyard beside it stands a domed stone türbe — the tomb of the family who built the mosque, its arches open to the garden and topped with a copper crescent.

Both are working mosques and part of the daily rhythm of the neighbourhood rather than monuments behind glass.

4 min on foot
06
In the centre of Podgorica

The King Nikola monument

Across from the Parliament

In the centre of Podgorica, across Bulevar Svetog Petra Cetinjskog from the Parliament, a bronze equestrian statue of Nikola I Petrović Njegoš — the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Montenegro.

He reigned from 1860 to 1918, carried the country through international recognition at the Congress of Berlin and through two Balkan wars, and is remembered as a diplomat and a poet in equal measure: the Montenegrin anthem leans on his verse.

The statue stands in the landscaped green strip along the boulevard, on the usual walking route between Trg Republike and the Parliament, and is open to passers-by at any hour.

7 min on foot

Sleep inside the old town.

Fifteen rooms at Kralja Nikole 10 — the centre one minute one way, Sahat Kula three, the river six.