El Zorro: Balkans 14: Budva ( 巴爾幹半島之行14 :布德瓦)

Our first sight of another little 3,500 year-old coastal town in Montenegro called Budva (Будва in Montenegrin and Serbian and Budua in Italian and Μπούντβα in Greek) with some 18,000 locals living there, mostly Serbian with a smattering of Muslims and Croats. It forms part of the so-called "Budvanska rivijera", famous for its sandy beaches, diverse nightlife, and samples of Mediterranean architecture . It now has more than half a million visitors a year but tourism also brought problems, mainly shortage of water, electricity and parking spaces.

According to historians, some people were already living there in 5th century BC.Legend has it that the town was founded by Cadmus the Phoenician, a Thebean exile. A bone of contention between ancient Greece and Rome, upon the fall of the Roman Empire which divided into Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, Budva became the defensive barrier which separated the two powers. In the Middle Ages, Budva was reigned by a succession of Doclean kings, as well as Serbian and Zetan aristocrats.For close to 4 centuries, from 1420 to 1797, it was ruled by the Venetian Republic which strengthened its fortifications against the Ottoman Turks and until early 19th century the people there spoke Venetian.Then it was ruled successively by Austria, France and Russia. In 1813-1814, Boka Kotorska and Budva joined Montenegro in an alliance and thereafter until the end of WWI in 1918, it became part of the Austrian Empire after that part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia but it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in 1941 and upon being liberated from the Fascists at the end of 1944, it reverted to Yugoslavia. It's now part of the newly independent Montenegro.But the town was rocked by an earthquake on 15 April 1979 which devastated most of its old buildings. It took them some 8 years to have them restored to their original form. The Old Town, along with the city of Budva was said to have been discovered by a Greek sailor by the name of Boutoua. Eventually the Roman Empire took over the whole Montenegrin coast but since it was under Venetian rule for 4 centuries, much its architecture is Venetian in design but many doors, hinges, windows, balconies and many other small but noticeable things remained Romaneque. The town has a typical Mediterranean climate, with warm summers and mild winters, and 230 sunny days in a year. Budva is referred to by the locals as the Montenegrin Kuwait, because of the number of resident millionaires compared to its relatively small population: there are approximately 500 millionaires in that town of around 22,000 people. Many of the newly rich re-invested their money in real-estate, buying homes in central Podgorica and Belgrade, which resulted in higher real-estate prices in Podgorica and Belgrade.

There were lavenders everywhere

A close up of two of them

The old city wall

a look-out tower

A view from the city wall

A boat taking to the sea

The path to the sea wall

An old fashioned canon

An old fashioned lamp sticking out from the strong stone masonry. I like the fern behind it which seemed to form part of its decorations.

part of the old fortifications

The entrance to the maritime museum

a model ship on display

A 3-rig ship with sails against the winds

another one, much broader

Another ship showing the Christian cross

An older model

This one has a much shallower body

Another one

A catapult

The library

A bust on the shelf

The entrance lobby

The staircase landing

The entrance to the museum

There is a bridge joining the museum to the sea wall

The Holy Trinity, which was built in 1804.

Another view of the same church

Flower decoration for a roadside restaurant. The town once hosted a Rolling Stones concert

A roadside fountain fountain

A terraced restaurant with a ship's mast as decoration

The streets were quite narrow

Another alley

Pottery for sale

And sourvenirs

An antique shop

beautiful back on the way to the beach

The entrance to the beach

Mogren, Budva's most famous beach

Children having fun. We were told by our guide that sometimes we might find topless girls. I certainly did this time.

Tourists having fun

Flowers growing close to a wall

flowers on restaurant tables

the narrow alleys were not wasted

A table outside one of the local restaurants

table nicely laid out

Fish anyone?

Bagel and snacks

There were some residences inside the old town too

Creepers on the wall

And some purple flowers too

We had to pay to go up the sea wall at one end of which is a restaurant on the terrace facing the sea

A view of the terrace restaurant

The steps to the sea wall

The small island opposite to the old town

facilities for boating

A closer view of the boating facilities: there's even a small church on the tiny island

Its stony outcrop

rows and rows of bodies absorbing the Adriatic sun

The buoys marking out safety limits

A more distant view of the beach

A view of the old town

Another view of the old town and adjacent beach

The museum facing the sea

Clouds above the old town

A view of the beach and the old town

A boat speeding across the mouth of the bay

The sea wall

There are also three main churches in the old town viz. St. Ivan's, built in the 7th century; St. Mary's of Punta dating from 840 and the Trinity Church in the 19th century.