This article or section should be merged with Kotor

Cattaro or Kotor is the chief town of an administrative district in Austria. Cattaro occupies a narrow ledge between the Montenegrin Mountains and the Bocche di Cattaro, a winding and beautiful inlet of the Adriatic Sea. This inlet expands into five broad gulfs, united by narrower channels, and forms one of the finest natural harbours in Europe. Teodo, on the outermost gulf, is a small naval port. In the first years of the 20th century, Cattaro was strongly fortified, and about 3000 troops were stationed in its neighborhood. On the seaward side, the defensive works included Castelnuovo (Erceg Novi), which guarded the main entrance to the Bocche. On the landward side, the long walls running from the town to the castle of San Giovanni, far above, formed a striking feature in the landscape; and the heights of the Krivoscie or Crevoscia, a group of barren mountains between Montenegro, Herzegovina, and the sea, were crowned by small forts.

There are many interesting places on the shores of the Bocche. Castelnuovo is a picturesque town, with a dismantled 14th century citadel, which has, at various times, been occupied by Bosnians, Turks, Spaniards, Russians, French, English and Austrians. The orthodox convent of St. Sava, standing amid beautiful gardens, was founded in the 16th century, and contains many fine specimens of 17th century silversmith work. There is a Benedictine monastery on a small island opposite to Perasto (Perast), eight miles east of Castelnuovo. Perasto itself was for a time an independent state in the 14th century. Rhizon, the modern hamlet of Risano, close by, was a thriving Illyrian city as early as 229 BC, and gave its name to the Bocche, then known as Rhizonicus Sinus. Rhizon submitted to Rome in 168 BC, and about the same time Ascrivium, or Ascruvium, the modern Cattaro, is first mentioned as a neighboring city. Justinian built a fortress above Ascrivium in AD 535, after expelling the Goths, and a second town probably grew up on the heights round it, for Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in the 10th century, alludes to Lower Cattaro. The city was plundered by the Saracens in 840, and by the Bulgarians in 1102. In the next year it was ceded to Servia by the Bulgarian tsar Samuel, but revolted, in alliance with Ragusa, and only submitted in 1184, as a protected state, preserving intact its republican institutions, and its right to conclude treaties and engage in war. It was already an episcopal see, and, in the Dominican and Franciscan monasteries were established to check the spread of Bogomilism.

In the 14th century the commerce of Cattaro rivalled that of Ragusa, and provoked the jealousy of Venice. The downfall of Servia in 1389 left the city without a guardian, and, after being seized and abandoned by Venice and Hungary in turn, it passed under Venetian rule in 1420. It was besieged by the Turks in 1538 and 1657, visited by plague in 1572, and nearly destroyed by earthquakes in 1563 and 1667. By the treaty of Campo-Formio in 1797 it passed to Austria; but in 1805, by the treaty of Pressburg, it was assigned to Italy, and was united in 1810 with the first French Empire. In 1814 it was restored to Austria by the Congress of Vienna. The attempt to enforce compulsory military service, made and abandoned in 1869, but finally successful in 1881, led to two short-lived revolts among the Krivoscians, during which Cattaro was the Austrian headquarters.

From an old encyclopedia.