Podgorica

People have lived here since the late Stone Age. In the Iron Age the area belonged to the Illyrian Labeates and Docleatae, and some three kilometres north of today's city stood the Roman town of Doclea, home town of the mother of the emperor Diocletian. In the Middle Ages the town on the site was known as Ribnica; the name Podgorica — "under the hill", after the small Gorica hill above the centre — first appears in 1326 in a court document in the archives of Kotor. It prospered on the trade road between Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Serbia.

The Ottomans took the town in 1474, built a large fortress in 1479 and made Podgorica their main military bastion in the region, with towers, gates and ramparts; for four centuries it was an Ottoman town of the Shkodër region. After the Montenegrin-Ottoman war, the Congress of Berlin awarded it to Montenegro in 1878, when more than 8,000 Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim residents lived there. A new town, Nova Varoš, rose on the right bank of the Ribnica, and by the First World War Podgorica was the largest city of the Kingdom of Montenegro. In 1918 the Podgorica Assembly ended Montenegrin statehood and merged the country into the new South Slav kingdom.

The city was bombed more than 80 times in the Second World War and was liberated on 19 December 1944. Renamed Titograd, it became the capital of Socialist Montenegro, gained factories, an aluminium plant in 1969 and a university in 1974, and grew about sevenfold in three decades. It took back the name Podgorica after a referendum in 1992, was struck by NATO airstrikes in 1999, and became the capital of independent Montenegro in 2006.

Podgorica is the country's cultural and media centre, though much of its historic heritage remains in the old royal capital, Cetinje. The Montenegrin National Theatre, founded in 1953, is the most important stage in the country; the City Theatre includes children's and puppet theatres; and the Budo Tomović Cultural-Informational Centre runs Podgorica Cultural Summer, the FIAT international alternative theatre festival and the December arts programme DEUS. The national broadcaster RTCG and all of Montenegro's daily newspapers are based here.

Sport is a passion, with football and basketball far ahead of the rest. Budućnost — "the future" — is the city's leading club across several sports: its basketball team has had success in regional and European competitions, and the football club gave a start to Predrag Mijatović and Dejan Savićević, both born in the city. Chess is popular too, and the Podgorica Marathon and the Morača River jumps draw international competitors.

The city is religiously mixed. Most residents are Orthodox, but there are sizeable Muslim and Catholic communities, and the new Orthodox cathedral, the mosques of the old town and the brutalist Catholic church in Konik reflect that history. Above all, though, Podgorica is known for its café culture: an espresso at a pavement table is the city's favourite pastime.

About 180,000 people live in the city — by far the largest in Montenegro, and home to a large share of the country's population — and the wider area of the former municipality, including Tuzi and Zeta, which became separate municipalities in 2018 and 2022, has about 210,000. Most residents identify as Montenegrin or Serb.

Podgorica is the country's economic engine as well as its seat of government. The heavy industries of the Yugoslav era — aluminium, tobacco, engineering — mostly collapsed in the 1990s under sanctions and the loss of their markets, though the winery Plantaže survived. Government, banking, the stock exchange, telecoms, the media and the national airline now dominate, along with the University of Montenegro and the Academy of Sciences and Arts. An ongoing construction boom, fed partly by expatriate communities, has turned an old industrial zone along the Cetinjski put boulevard into a busy new district.

City politics changed in 2023, when Olivera Injac of the Europe Now movement became the first mayor in a quarter of a century not from the Democratic Party of Socialists; Saša Mujović, also of Europe Now, has been mayor since December 2024. Daily life is shaped by the climate: hot summers send residents to the cafés in the evening, to the Morača river to swim and to Lake Skadar or the hills at weekends.

Podgorica eats like inland Montenegro, with influences that arrived over centuries from the Levant and Turkey. Grilled meat, roštilj, is the everyday food — ćevapi, ražnjići and pljeskavica, which is served in a local form of hamburger and is the city's most popular fast food. Burek, a filled pastry, is the most popular fast food in the country.

Lake Skadar, just south of the city, supplies carp, both smoked and fresh, and ukljeva, small fish that are smoked and dried. Highland dishes reach the city too: kačamak, a polenta with buttered potato and kajmak, and cicvara, stewed cornmeal with kajmak, a salted and compressed fresh cream.

Wine is a local product. Plantaže, whose vineyard on the Ćemovsko plain just outside the city covers more than 2,000 hectares and is the largest in one piece in Europe, is the most awarded winery in Montenegro, and two of its cellars, Šipčanik and Stari podrum, are visitor attractions. Coffee completes the picture: espresso in the cafés, and Turkish coffee at home, almost unavoidable at any visit.