Sveti Stefan

Sveti Stefan occupies a slender sliver of the Montenegrin Adriatic, a 12 400-square-metre islet bound to the mainland by a narrow spit of sand and pebble, and lies six kilometres southeast of the walled town of Budva. Once the capital of the medieval Paštrovići community, this diminutive settlement—historically home to some four hundred souls in the mid-nineteenth century—now functions almost entirely as an exclusive retreat, its original houses repurposed as guest suites and its narrow lanes restored to mirror centuries past. Despite the suction of global luxury hospitality, the town’s stone ramparts, hushed chapels and tumbling olive groves retain whispers of its Venetian past, Ottoman sieges and Adriatic piracy.

Centuries before Stefan Milutin’s descendants lent their name to kingdoms and cloistered courts, the Paštrovići clans fished these emerald waters and tilled the terraces of the hilly coastline. By 1423, fearing incursions from Ottoman galleys, the clansmen sought the protection of Venice. In return for naval guardianship they relinquished neither tribute nor local custom, yet they agreed to desist from preying on Venetian shipping. Thus the promise of sovereignty was brokered not with gold—no tribute passed between doge and dželât—but rather with autonomy and with shared apprehension of a Turkish advance.

Legend holds that the fortress walls, later to define the footprint of Sveti Stefan’s fortified village, were financed by the spoils of a daring assault upon Ottoman galleys off Jaz beach in 1539. As the story goes, Paštrovići warriors, mustered to relieve besieged Kotor, intercepted a Turkish flotilla on its return voyage. They liberated prisoners, seized treasure and returned to their rocky perch to erect ramparts from the spoils. Within a generation, however, the Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War levelled the fledgling fortification. Appeals from Paštrovići envoys in Venice prompted a mid-sixteenth century reconstruction, granting the settlement both a second birth and the reinforced walls that stand, in part, to this day.

By the dawn of the nineteenth century, Sveti Stefan had evolved from a military outpost into a maritime haven for corsairs. Twelve founding families—each granted a house within the walls—oversaw the comings and goings of goods and vessels, while fishermen cast nets beyond the tombolo’s curve. In those days the village teemed with nearly four hundred residents. Fisherfolk traded olives and salted fish on the mainland; priests ministered in three simple chapels; and every alley echoed with dialects shaped by Slavic, Venetian and Ottoman tongues.

The twentieth century, however, proved transformative. Residents departed to enlist in the World Wars or sought livelihoods overseas; by 1954 only twenty inhabitants remained on the island. Recognising both its cultural resonance and its touristic allure, the Yugoslav government expropriated the village in 1955. The entire community was relocated to the adjacent shore—and their houses, facades and tiled roofs were converted into hotel rooms, restaurants and a casino. Interiors were refitted with modern comforts, yet the exterior retained its medieval aspect: narrow streets bounded by ochre walls, shuttered windows framing cerulean sea views.

From the 1960s through the 1980s Sveti Stefan emerged as a discreet enclave for artists, statesmen and celebrities. Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles arrived in pinstriped jackets; Princess Margaret lunched at the open-air “Piazza,” beneath clustered bougainvillea; Sylvester Stallone trained on the beaches of nearby Miločer; and Bobby Fischer faced Boris Spassky in a clandestine chess match that stirred more intrigue than any tourism brochure could convey. Villa Miločer, perched amid eight hundred olive trees on a thirty-two-hectare estate, served as the summer residence of Queen Marija Karađorđević between 1934 and 1936; after 2009 it housed eight suites—two of which remain the Queen Marija Suites—within the Aman resort’s Villa Miločer annex.

Geologically, the islet demonstrates a rare coastal phenomenon: the formation of a tombolo. Waves, upon striking the exposed offshore side, erode bedrock and transport sediment toward the leeward shore, where diminished wave energy encourages deposition. Over centuries, this process sculpted a sandy-pebble causeway that linked island to mainland. Sveti Stefan’s tombolo, classified as a simple type (one isthmus only), remains both pathway and proof of nature’s quiet engineering.

Religiously and culturally, Sveti Stefan preserves several chapels of note. The island’s eponymous church crowns its highest point, marking St. Stephen’s dedication from the Nemanjić era; the Church of Alexander Nevsky, consecrated in 1938, reflects the era of Balkan monarchies; and a modest Transfiguration chapel stands sentinel at the tombolo’s entrance. A fourth church, dedicated to the Theotokos and restored by Queen Marija in 1938, lay hidden under the resort’s casino floor until its rediscovery in 2008.

The 1990s fractured Yugoslavia, drawing a curtain across Adriatic tourism. Sveti Stefan’s sheen dulled as visitors waned and upkeep faltered. In 2007 the Government of Montenegro invited bids to restore the island’s former grace. Aman Resorts secured a thirty-year lease and oversaw a meticulous refurbishment, completed in 2009. The reopened Aman Sveti Stefan offered fifty-eight guest accommodations—cottages, suites and vaulted guest rooms—along with a trove of dining experiences clustered around the Piazza: taverna, enoteca, pasticceria, antipasti bar and a cigar room opening onto the Adriatic.

For a decade the resort flourished. In July 2010 Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli performed beneath the moonlit ramparts, commemorating Montenegro’s Statehood Day and the hotel’s golden jubilee. That same year Gallivanter’s Guide named the property Hotel of the Year. Yet in early 2020, the global pandemic shuttered borders and silenced la dolce vita along the Montenegrin Riviera. Aman Sveti Stefan remains closed, its staff dispersed, as disputes over security and regulatory oversight stall any firm reopening date.

Access to the island endures by road, path or bus. A fixed-price taxi from Tivat International Airport costs approximately €25, rising to €30 from Podgorica and €100 from Dubrovnik. Pedestrians may thread coastal trails from Budva, passing through tunnels beneath abandoned developments, trekking over Zoff’s fish restaurant and winding past Kraljičina plaža before ascending to the tombolo’s entrance. Local buses, charging €2 per ride, shuttle regularly between Budva and Pržno, with onward connections to the isthmus; entry to the island itself remains the province of resort guests or those holding lunch or dinner reservations.

Today, Sveti Stefan stands as an intersection of natural wonder, layered history and the shifting tides of leisure. Its vermilion roofs cluster against limestone walls, framed by the sea’s shifting palette, while centuries of fortification peer down on sands where families once spilled from fishing boats. Though the bustle of everyday life has retreated to the mainland, the town’s stones continue to speak: of Paštrović jurists settling disputes on benches above the entrance gate; of olive groves where Queen Marija strolled at dawn; of waves that forged a causeway in silence. In every crevice and cobblestone, Sveti Stefan offers both the weight of history and the promise of renewal—a testament to place as much as to passing time.