Njeguši: Ham, Cheese and a Dynasty on the Lovćen Road

Njeguši is a village of a few dozen people on a mountain pass, and a national treasure in the form of a ham. The village sits on the plateau between Kotor and Cetinje at about 900 metres, and it is known for two things: it is the home of the Petrović dynasty that ruled the country for two centuries, and its pršut is the one Montenegrins rate as the best in the country.

You cannot miss it — it is right on the road. And you should not drive straight through.

Why the ham comes from here

It is the air. Njeguši sits in a saddle where dry mountain air is drawn in from Lovćen on one side and salt air from the sea on the other. The leg is cured in that draught and smoked over beech for five to eight weeks.

The whole cycle (salting, pressing, smoking and maturing) takes about a year; how it works stage by stage is in Njeguši prosciutto. The next village ten kilometres away does exactly the same and gets a different result. That is not marketing, it is microclimate.

The cheese is local too: young in oil, or aged and hard. So are the honey and the rakija. How Njeguši cheese differs from the country’s other cheeses is in Montenegrin cheese.

How to buy

The local rule worth remembering:

Buy the leg you were given to taste. A shop will have several hams of different ages and they differ noticeably. If you liked what you tasted, ask for it to be cut from that leg, not “one like it”.

Rough prices: pršut about €20–35 a kilo, more in the shops aimed at tourists. There are no recent verified prices, so compare two or three shops. A whole Njeguši cheese costs from €10 (a 2022 price).

The ham is sliced in front of you and vacuum-packed on request, which makes it easy to carry around the country. Taking it home is another matter: meat and cheese from Montenegro are not allowed into the EU, the UK or Turkey in any packaging, and are confiscated and destroyed at the border. What you can take home, and where, is in What to bring home from Montenegro.

Cash is usual — not every shop has a card terminal.

What else to see

The Njegoš house museum — the family home of Petar II Petrović Njegoš, poet and prince-bishop. The museum describes it as a typical house of a well-to-do Montenegrin family of the early 19th century; inside are a few rooms of household objects. Entry is €3, and a ticket for Njegoš’s mausoleum on Lovćen gets you in here at no extra charge. The museum opens from 15 April to 15 November and is closed in winter; who Njegoš was, and where else his story can be followed, is in Njegoš and his mausoleum.

The village itself — stone houses with flat roofs of a kind you do not see on the coast. Twenty minutes to walk round.

Many people stop here for lunch: the taverns serve the same pršut and cheese plus lamb cooked under a sač. It costs more than in Kotor and tastes better.

Getting there

Njeguši is on the Kotor–Lovćen–Cetinje road: 22 kilometres and 45–50 minutes from Kotor up the hairpin road, 20 kilometres and half an hour from Cetinje.

The drive is half the experience: 25 hairpins above the bay. See the Kotor–Lovćen road.

No buses pass through the village. That leaves two options: your own car or an excursion.

Without a car

Njeguši features in the main coach excursion into the mountains, Heart of Montenegro: Cetinje, Njeguši and the cable car above Kotor, from €73 per person from Budva, from €83 from Kotor and Tivat, and from €88 from Bar. It includes a stop to taste the ham and cheese. Maxi Montenegro, which took in Njegoš’s mausoleum as well, is not running in 2026.

The company behind these tours works only with Russian-speaking guides, on group and private tours alike; if that does not suit you, the car is the answer, below. All routes are under things to do.

With a car

Parking by the shops is free and there is room. At midday in summer the coaches are here — come before eleven or after four.

Next along the route is Cetinje, the old capital half an hour’s drive away. A compact car suits this loop: car rental in Kotor.

What else is worth trying in the country — kajmak, lamb under the sač, Vranac and Krstač wines — is collected in What to eat in Montenegro.

Prices checked in September 2026; for food they vary by shop and curing time.