The dead town
above the lake.

Routed from Ulcinj, the lake is about 36 km and the fortress hill above it about 37, which is roughly an hour on the roads the engines will use. Both engines agree on the distance to a hundred metres and differ on the time by fourteen minutes. The source engine gives about an hour and the cross-check more. On the way, the car you take across is on a main road for the length of the drive; the last part up to the ruin has not been measured.

Several travel sites put Svac at 20 to 25 km from Ulcinj and 20 to 35 minutes. Neither routing engine reproduces that, so it is not used here.

The figure on this page is the routed one. The rental conditions apply on any route.

That has not been established. The last part of the approach has not been measured, the tourist organisation does not describe the road, and the pages that describe it give no source.

Rental cars are allowed on paved public roads only, so the drive ends where the sealed surface does. When choosing which car suits the drive out there, note that no rental car is permitted on an unmade track, whatever its ground clearance.

Drive to where the tarmac stops, park where there is room to turn round, and walk the rest.

Shas sits on top of an 85-metre hill on the north side of the lake, looking over the water and out towards the Bojana delta. The legend is that it had as many churches as there are days in the year; the archaeology shows about ten.

Two of them are the ones people come for: the Church of St John, built inside the fortress in the thirteenth century, and St Mary, built outside it in the fourteenth in Gothic style. The town was taken by Stefan Nemanja in 1183 and by the Mongols in 1242, and destroyed by the Ottomans in 1571, since when it has been what the tourist organisation calls a dead town.

It minted its own coins, inscribed sovacii civitas. The facts above come from the Ulcinj tourist organisation.

Opening times, entry arrangements and where to leave a car have not been established.

Sasko jezero sits below the hill, and the tourist organisation puts the ruin on the north side of it. The shore and access to the water have not been established.

The hill is exposed. Sasko jezero is not Lake Skadar. For Skadar, there is the lake road to Murici, a separate drive: Virpazar is about sixty-five minutes from Ulcinj on the road to the capital, in the other direction.

Back on the coast, the beach on the way back is ten minutes from the town. The lake road and the coast road do not meet, so there is no loop.

If the car is not already with you, picking the car up in town first is one option, and delivery to where you are staying is the most common. Whichever it is, the collection point is stated on the car before you reserve. Other drives are in the rest of the guides, including the other inland runs and the coast road. The same surface rule applies to all of them.