The Living Village Above Kotor

This is not a museum of a village. It is a village being returned to itself.

A place where heritage is not something you read about on a plaque, but something you walk through, sit in, taste, hear and feel, inside the landscape where it first took shape.

What we are Creating

Mali Zalazi is a living museum, set in the years between 1920 and 1930, when life here was active, connected and self-sustaining. Some people will recognise the model. It is the tradition of Skansen in Stockholm and the great open-air museums of Europe, brought for the first time to the Bay of Kotor.

Stone houses will be function again. The old paths between them will be walked once more. Shared spaces will return to the purposes they were built for. The circular stone threshing floors, known as gumna, will tell the story of work, yes, but also of music, dancing and feast days, just as they once did.

A Living Experience

This is not about recreating the past exactly as it was. It is about understanding it, and letting it shape a more considered way of living today. Traditional knowledge sits alongside modern systems, with rainwater collection, solar energy and low-impact infrastructure supporting a village that is both rooted and forward looking.

Mali Zalazi is designed to be felt, not just observed. The air up here is cooler than the coast, and cleaner. You hear goat bells before you see the village. You walk in through a stone archway and the sea appears behind you, suddenly, framed between two houses.

Visitors can join guided tours, take part in workshops, or simply spend a morning inside its spaces. A small café will serve the flavours of the region: priganice still warm from the pan, figs eaten straight from the tree in season, thick local honey, strong mountain coffee. It is a place to slow down, to notice, and to experience a way of life that is simple, resourceful and deeply connected to place.

the plan phase by phase

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Phase One

The Welcome House, courtyard and village fountain, with the essential infrastructure that makes everything else possible. Solar power. Eco facilities. Water that runs again.

Phase Two

The careful restoration of two key houses. One exploring domestic life, where families cooked and slept and gathered. The other the rhythms of work and the seasons, of harvest and preserving and making do. Alongside the houses, guided tours and educational workshops.

Phase Three

Terraces replanted with figs, olives, vines and lavender, the things that grew here before and will grow here again. A Diaspora Wall carrying the family names of those who left, and a digital archive connecting more than a hundred families to the village wherever they are in the world.

Why this works

Mali Zalazi sits in a genuinely rare position. Within the UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone of the Bay of Kotor. Above a region that welcomes more than 300,000 cruise passengers and half a million independent visitors every year. Along walking routes used by 70,000 hikers. Even one percent of those visitors choosing to spend a few hours in the village makes this a model that can sustain itself.

Looking Ahead

The aim is a place that is culturally significant, environmentally responsible and economically sustainable. Four to six local jobs in the first phase, scaling to twenty or more. More than 200 artifacts documented and protected. Traditional skills preserved and passed on. More than 100 diaspora families reconnected to the place their names come from within five years.

This is not only about restoring buildings. It is about restoring connection.

Help us build it.