Stari Bar (Old Bar): A Taxi Guide to Montenegro's Old Town

Modern Bar and Stari Bar are close enough on a map that people assume they're basically the same place. They aren't. Stari Bar is a hillside ruin a few kilometers inland, largely abandoned since the 19th century, and stepping through its gate feels less like visiting a museum and more like wandering into a ghost town that happens to have a spectacular view.

A short history

The site has been settled since roughly the 7th to 3rd century BC, when Illyrian tribes first built on this steep, naturally defensible cliff at the foot of Mount Rumija. Over the centuries it passed through Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman hands, with construction on the fortress itself stretching from around the 10th to the 18th century. At its peak it held something like 600 buildings within its walls, a genuine town rather than just a fort. Most of that came to an end during a 19th-century war, and an earthquake in 1979 did further damage to what was left. Restoration work has been ongoing since the 1980s, and today the whole site functions as an open-air museum, one of the largest medieval archaeological sites in the Balkans.

What it's like to walk through

There's no single "must-see" building the way there might be at a more curated historical site. The appeal of Stari Bar is the accumulation, stone streets, collapsed walls, the shells of churches and houses, olive trees that have taken root inside what used to be someone's living room. Wear real shoes, the ground is uneven throughout, and bring water, there isn't much shade once you're inside the walls. Give yourself at least an hour, longer if you like ruins, since the site is bigger than it looks from the entrance.

The views from the upper sections look out over the plain below toward the coast and, on a clear day, out to the Adriatic. It's worth the climb just for that.

Getting there by taxi

Stari Bar sits uphill from modern Bar, close enough that the drive itself only takes a few minutes, but far enough, and steep enough, that walking it in the summer heat is not something we'd recommend unless you're planning to spend the rest of the day resting afterward. The trip falls into the suburban fare tier once you're outside Bar's immediate center, which works out to a reasonable per-kilometer rate given the short distance involved.

Most people pair Stari Bar with a stop in Bar itself, the palace, the old olive tree near Mirovica, the promenade, either before or after the old town, since it's an easy add-on rather than a separate trip.

If you're skipping the rental car altogether

Stari Bar is actually a good example of where a taxi genuinely beats a rental car. There's limited parking near the entrance, the road up is narrow in places, and you don't need a vehicle once you're there since the whole point is walking through the ruins on foot. Drop off, explore at your own pace, and book a return ride when you're ready rather than worrying about where you left the car. We go into this idea more broadly in our piece on seeing the municipality without a rental car.

Booking

Book through the Greencar.me Taxi app, also on the App Store. Since this is a short local hop, you won't need much lead time, though if you're visiting during the hottest part of a summer day, it's worth booking your return ride before you go in rather than trying to arrange one from inside the ruins where signal can be patchy in spots.

For the wider picture of how taxis work across the municipality, including pricing and the pickup zone, see our local taxi guide overview.