River Gate (North Gate)

This guide to the River Gate in Kotor starts with the carved stone above the arch and the summer of 1539, when the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa sent his fleet up the little Škurda river toward this door. It then turns inside the walls, to a servant girl from the hills who chose to be sealed into a cell for life, and to the frightened town that went looking for her. Best heard standing just outside the arch, looking up at the lion.