Rick Steves Snapshot Dubrovnik by Rick Steves

Author:Rick Steves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avalon Publishing
Published: 2018-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Verige Strait

Any would-be invaders had to pass through this strategic bottleneck to reach the port towns inside the bay. It’s narrow enough to carefully monitor (not even a quarter-mile wide), but deep enough to allow even today’s large megaships through (more than 130 feet deep). Because this extremely narrow strait is easy to defend, whoever controlled the inside of the fjord was allowed to thrive virtually unchecked.

Centuries before Christ, the Bay of Kotor was home to the Illyrians—the mysterious ancestors of today’s Albanians. In the third century B.C., Illyrian Queen Teuta spanned this strait with an ingenious shipwrecking mechanism to more effectively collect taxes. To this day, many sunken ships litter the bottom of the bay. (Teuta was a little too clever for her own good: Her shrewdness and success attracted the attention of the on-the-rise Romans, who seized most of her holdings.)

In later times, chains were stretched across the bay here to control the entrance (the name “Verige” comes from a Slavic word for “chain”). Later still, the Venetians placed cannons on either side of the strait, with a clear shot at any entering ships. Looking across the wide part of the bay, notice the town of Perast (by the two islands). Perast—where we’ll be stopping soon—was also equipped with cannons that could easily reach across the bay. This extensive defense network succeeded in keeping the Ottomans—and any other would-be invaders—out of the bay.

• Continue driving around the fjord. You’ll pass through the village of...

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