Sveti Stefan

The settlement was fortified around 1442, when local clans walled the islet to shelter people from Ottoman raids. For centuries afterwards it was a fishing village - four hundred people in the nineteenth century, down to about twenty by the 1950s.

In the mid-fifties the near-empty village was turned into a hotel, keeping the stone houses and the street plan intact. It drew the kind of guests that era produced - Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor - and the name stuck.

The islet is linked to the mainland by a tombolo: a natural bar of sand and gravel built up by two opposing currents. That is what made it defensible and, at the same time, reachable by fishing boats.

The island itself is a private resort. What is open to everyone is the view from the sea - and from the water you get the whole shape of it at once, the red roofs, the isthmus and the beach curving away on both sides. It is roughly an hour and a half south of Boka by fast yacht, and sits outside the bay, so it is a fair-weather run rather than a routine afternoon stop.