The embassy quarter of Cetinje is one of the strangest and most interesting urban districts in the Balkans — a collection of 19th and early 20th-century European diplomatic buildings clustered within a few streets of each other, representing the brief period when this mountain capital was taken seriously by the great powers.
Walking through the neighbourhood today is slightly surreal: the building that once housed the French Embassy is now a school; the Russian Embassy is an art gallery; the British consulate stands empty. The architectural styles are a compressed survey of late-19th-century European institutional design — some neoclassical, some more vernacular, all built to project their nation's dignity to a court that received delegations in a city smaller than many European market towns. Pick up a map from the tourist office to identify the former embassies as you walk.