Montenegro's second city — the brewery town with Ostrog Monastery in its mountain and a Roman past beneath its streets
Nikšić is Montenegro's second-largest city, sitting on a high karst plateau (670m) surrounded by mountains in the country's interior. It's primarily known for two things: the Trebjesa brewery, which produces Nikšićko — Montenegro's national beer and one of the best-selling beers in the former Yugoslavia — and proximity to the Ostrog Monastery, carved into a sheer cliff face 900m above the valley floor and one of the most dramatically sited religious buildings in the Balkans. The city has a large central park, a late 19th-century royal church, and the ruins of an Illyrian-era fortress (Bedem),…
The area was settled continuously from Illyrian times — the tribe known as the Labeates established settlements on the plateau, and Roman occupation left archaeological traces throughout the city centre. The medieval settlement was known as Onogošt; it became Nikšić only in 1856 when Prince Danilo of Montenegro renamed it for the Nikšić tribe after incorporating it into the Montenegrin principality. The town developed significantly under Prince Nikola in the late 19th century, who built the Austro-Hungarian-style church and laid out the central boulevard. The brewery was established in 1896 a…