Susan's NGTAW Blog: Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks

St George's Island (left) and Our Lady of the Rocks (right) - Perast, Montenegro

Thursday, July 7 - Trip Day 8

We arrived at our new port, Kotor, Montenegro, this morning about 7:30 AM, after a few hours transit through the Boka Kotorska. We had a quick breakfast so that we could board the tender at 8 AM to take our buses for our first excursion - a visit to the town of Perast and the seaman's shrine of Our Lady of the Rocks.

The bus ride along the waterfront from Kotor to Perast follows the shoreline and takes about 40 minutes. Along the way, we passed a number of oyster and mussel farms in the sea, as well as some turquoise blue swimming beaches. From the bus, we could see the two islands that were our destination, Gospa od Skrpjeda - Croatian for Our Lady of the Rocks, and Svete Jurej, St. George's island.

Picturesque town of Perast

Boats for hire to take you to visit Our Lady of the Rocks

Completely man-made, built from piling rocks on a low lying reef over the centuries

Visitors are not allowed on the island of St. George, which houses a local cemetary

The Benedictine Monastery on St. George dates from the 12th century

Look below the water to see all the white rocks that have been collected to make the island

Our story begins on July 22, 1452, when the two fisherman, the brothers Morsic, discovered the painting of Mary, Our Lady of Perast, floating in the sea at the location of the current church. They took it to their house, and one of the brothers was cured of an illness. Word spread and to show their appreciation, the town built a shrine on the reef where the painting was found.

Over the years, it became known as Gospa od Skrpjeda, a shrine for seaman, as well as those who were sick or injured. A tradition of bringing rocks to the shrine to build up the island has been ongoing for centuries. The town of Perast holds a festival every July 22, the fasinata, launching their boats at sunset to throw rocks onto the island.

The large cruise ship, following us in the Bay, traverses the Strait of Verige

The church is built of stone from Korcula and dates from 1722

Church interior is decorated with oil on canvas scenes of sybils and the life of Mary

Inside the church, a row of silver votive plaques lines the nave, underneath the ornately decorated ceiling. This row of panels contains thousands of silver plates that have been offered in gratitude for saving from storms, pirates and wars. There were already more than 600 of these silver plates in the mid 1600's when it was documented that pirates stole them from the church.

The church also contains a small museum with additional paintings, textiles, manuscripts and art objects. We also stopped in the town to visit the Perast Museum in the Bujovic Palace.