Perast and Risan by car from Kotor

In Risan, you visit the remains of a Roman town villa dating from the second century AD. Its architecture can now be read through the floor plan, low walls and floors: the rooms were arranged around an internal courtyard, with a corridor connecting them into a house. The decorated floors remain in their original rooms, so the mosaics are seen as part of a home where people once lived.

The best-known floor depicts Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, who was also adopted into Roman culture. The young man appears in a central medallion, reclining with his legs crossed and wings behind his shoulders. Square designs containing stylised poppy buds surround the scene. The connection between sleep and poppies gives the decoration of this room a distinctive theme.

The other rooms have no human figures. Circles, diamonds, triangles, rosettes and plant motifs form repeating patterns, bordered to follow the shape of the floor. White, grey and black stone predominate in these rooms, while the Hypnos mosaic also includes coloured tesserae. The stylised forms are flat, without an attempt to create an illusion of depth.

Later repairs are also visible on the floors, using coloured limestone pieces and fragments of pottery. They show that the house continued to be used and maintained after the original mosaics were made.

Perast is a maritime town whose position beside the Verige strait and ties to the Venetian Republic shaped its development. Its defences relied on the Fortress of the Holy Cross and towers. It did not have a complete ring of walls like Kotor. Maritime families built palaces by the sea, and their presence is still visible in stone doorways, balconies and family coats of arms.

Perast Museum occupies Bujovic Palace, built in 1694. Vicko Bujovic was a seafarer and soldier in Venetian service, and Tripo Kokolja painted his portrait in the early eighteenth century. From the street, you see the captain's house. Inside, the portrait introduces the man whose name it bears. Gifts from Perast's families formed the museum collection, so the exhibits represent the heritage of particular households as well as ships and seafaring.

In the Captain's Salon, a gilded staff belonging to the town captain in the eighteenth century is displayed alongside portraits and nautical instruments. The staff represented his authority in Perast. A model of the Adriana recalls the last ship in Perast's fleet and the end of the sailing-ship era. The ship sank near Alexandria. The Women's Room offers another view of these families: young women's chests, clothing, photographs and needlework show life at home, away from the decks of ships.

The painting of Marko Martinovic with the Russian boyars is especially interesting. It depicts training in maritime skills held in Perast at the end of the seventeenth century, during the time of Peter the Great. Martinovic's bust in the square in front of St Nicholas connects this museum story with Perast's public spaces.

On the same square, the bell tower of St Nicholas rises above the surrounding houses. Beside the old church stands the unfinished section of a larger church, whose construction stopped for lack of funds. Its position and scale show the church the town intended to build. Smekja Palace on the waterfront belongs to the same story of maritime prosperity: its grandeur reflects a family whose standing and wealth came from seafaring. Today it is part of a hotel complex, so this visit takes in the exterior. From the waterfront, the view then opens towards the two islands: Our Lady of the Rocks with its church, and St George with its dark cypress trees.