Eastern Montenegro's mountain valley town — monasteries, the source of the Lim River, and Komovi massif above
Berane sits in the upper Lim River valley in eastern Montenegro, a town of 30,000 surrounded by the high ridges of the Komovi massif to the west and the lower Bjelasica plateau to the north. It is among the least-visited towns in Montenegro by foreign tourists, which gives it an authenticity increasingly rare in the Adriatic-coast resort economy. The surrounding landscape is the main draw: Komovi — three peaks between 2,400m and 2,487m — offers some of Montenegro's most demanding mountain walking, while the Lim valley below supports traditional beekeeping and cattle-farming villages. The 14th…
The Lim valley around Berane has been settled since antiquity and formed part of the medieval Serbian state of Raška — the Đurđevi Stupovi monastery was built by Stefan Nemanja in 1175 and was one of the major ecclesiastical centres of medieval Serbia. The area passed through Ottoman rule, Serbian kingdom incorporation (1912), and Yugoslav federal structure, always maintaining its identity as an Orthodox Serbian market town. Berane was renamed Ivangrad during the Yugoslav socialist period and reverted to Berane after Montenegrin independence. The economic base has historically been timber and…