Montenegro

The monastery of Cetinje was both an episcopal see and a political capital: until 1852 Montenegro was governed by prince-bishops, an Orthodox theocracy unique in Europe. Kotor preserves a Venetian heritage on the World Heritage list.

Descended from the medieval principality of Zeta, the mountainous region kept de facto autonomy under Ottoman rule. From the seventeenth century the metropolitans of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty turned it into a hereditary ecclesiastical principality.

Independence was recognised in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin. The kingdom disappeared in 1918 into the nascent Yugoslavia.

After the Yugoslav break-up, Montenegro remained united with Serbia until the referendum of 21 May 2006, which restored independence with 55.5 % of the vote. The country unilaterally adopted the German mark in 1999 and then the euro in 2002. A NATO member in 2017, it has opened and provisionally closed the largest number of accession chapters in the Western Balkans.