Built in 1886 on the ruins of the original Cetinje Monastery, this little church has a lovely gilded iconostasis, but its main claim to fame is as the burial place of Cetinje’s founder, Ivan Crnojević, and Montenegro’s last sovereigns, Nikola I and Milena. The pair may have been unpopular after fleeing the country for Italy during WWI, but they received a hero’s welcome in 1989, when their bodies were returned and interred in these white-marble tombs in a three-hour service.
Though Montenegro was still a part of communist Yugoslavia, a quarter of its population were reported to have attended the ceremony, and the royal couple’s great-grandson Crown Prince Nicholas (a Parisian architect) was mobbed by adoring royalist fans.
