	Sveti Stefan


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This iconic island managed to be the most impressive yet disappointing thing about the Montenegro coast. Impressive in its quaint beauty, disappointing by its exclusivity, it now being a hotel complex accessible only to its guests. This leaves the lay tourist a little limited when it comes to photography, and actually having very much of their own to say about the old fishing village that was bought off and done up by a Singaporean company about 30 years ago.

Those who’ve already visited the old town of Budva will find the streets of Sveti Stefan easier to picture; cobbled, narrow and very hospitable. But not actually being able to walk through them leaves just the same basic view of the island which has graced calendars and desktops the world over, and which you see again here with very little in the way of diversity.

Panorama

The panorama view, one achieved only by boat, completes the outer picture although the sea facing shore is really a cliff face above which very little of the town itself can be seen. It fires the imagination, but to most people, Sveti Stefan, in all its unreachable rooftop glory, is really just an offshore temptress, alluding to what lies inside but with nothing more than a mono-perspective hint at what life in this ancient settlement must be, and have been, like.

The new town, which has grown up on the mainland around the tourist industry, boasts the same name, but not the same charm, and although it is eminently passable, its hilly streets really only act as vantage points for slightly different views of the forbidden island.