Ulcinj & Velika Plaža - sailing routes
Panorama of the city, Ulcinj, Montenegro - SimpleSail sailing routes
The southernmost city of the Montenegrin coast, right up to the Boyana River, along which the border with Albania runs, is within easy reach

Montenegrins received Ulcinj a little over a hundred years ago, in 1880 it was selected from the Ottoman Empire and the Montenegrin coast acquired one of the sunniest cities in the Adriatic.


Coordinates on the yacht chart plotter:   41°55.349'N   |   19°12.205'E



Like any frontier city, Ulcinj is a half-blooded city, bearing the seal of both sides. The trading quarter here is a bazaar, market days are Tuesday and Friday, minarets pierce the minarets with minarets, and the Serbian signs are duplicated in Albanian. Half-naked tourists with curiosity glance at women in kerchiefs and baleen men in a cafe - with no less curiosity about tourists.

The symbol of Ulcinj is certainly the Old Town, a fortress crowning a steep cliff over the sea with an incredible heap of eras with the Remnants of Illyrian-Greek fortifications, towers of medieval Serb rulers, Venetian chambers and churches with an attached minaret. Confusion is added by local people who skillfully weave into the history of the city the legends about Algerian pirates, black slaves, Jewish false prophets and Miguel Cervantes, who was captured by these pirates, sadly looking from that window and even falling in love with one of the Ulcinians. Along the narrow streets of the Old City, you have to wander around, look at the goats grazing in the fortress, indifferent to the concentration of history and, peering from the steep wall into the sea, to distinguish on the horizon the sails of pirate ships returning to the bay with rich prey.

Beach view of the fortress, Ulcinj, Montenegro - Montenegrin waters SimpleSail sailing routes
At the end of the XVI century, Ulcinj was conquered by the Ottoman Turks from the Venetians. The city stood on a favorable position - at the intersection of trade routes, on the border of two worlds - Christian and Turkish - the territories of Venice and the Great Porte. A lot of trouble to the Venetian merchant ships was delivered by light ships of the pirates. Patrolled the coast, attacked the port cities, and did not shun the slave trade. On the Small Beach of Ulcinj - just beneath the walls of the Old Town, they divided the looted goods, and black slaves were sold in the stone square inside the city walls. Each local resident hopes to find pirate gold, hidden somewhere in the city for a rainy day by one of the thugs.

Today, on the Small Beach - it's the city beach - people willing to sunbathe on the sand peacefully divide places. The Adriatic coast is not teeming with sandy beaches. In Ulcinj there are as many as two of them. The names of the beaches are uncomplicated. One is called Small with the length of only 360 meters, the other - the Great. Thirteen kilometers of the tiniest gray sand and mistral is a summer wind, surfing the waves and raising kites over the sea. The Great Beach ends by triangle of the Ada Island on the Boyana River. Curiously, it is here that the most famous nudist beach of Montenegrin coast is located, a blessed island of lovers to sunbathe naked.

Sandy beach, Velika Plaža, Montenegro
Sandy beach, Velika Plaža, Montenegro - Montenegrin waters SimpleSail sailing routes

Reread Cervantes, and suddenly the locals do not make up stories and a Spanish nobleman of the present languishing in the medieval tower overlooking the sea, and Dulcinea del Toboso depict one of the residents of Ulcinj.