Exploring Perast

Our Lady of the Rocks is a small artificial island a short boat ride from Perast. Apparently, its history dates back to 1452 when a pair of Venetian sailors claimed to have seen the face of the Virgin Mary imprinted a rock emerging from the sea. The rock became revered, and the island was slowly built around it using old shipwrecks weighed down with stones. This morning we took a boat ride across to explore the island, its chapel and museum. The chapel was built in 1615 and is covered from floor to ceiling with Venetian frescoes, wood carvings, and silver ornaments.

The museum contains an eclectic mix of objects reclaimed from the sea after centuries of ship wrecks. One famous piece in the museum is a work of embroidery created by a woman as she waited for her sailor husband to return from a voyage. The embroidery was worked with a mix of her own hair and silver thread. It must have taken years. The story goes that her hair changed colour as she kept working on the piece; her husband never returned.

Back on the mainland, we walked the 1.5 K Perast promenade, trying to find and identify the many ‘palaces’ that line the road. These were built during the time of the Venetian Republic by the wealthy fishermen, traders and mariners who flourished during this period.Read more