Montenegro’s Ancient Olive Trees and the Stara Maslina
On a small stretch of the Adriatic coast stands an olive tree that was old when Rome was young. Montenegro’s ancient olives are among Europe’s oldest living things — and they’re still working.
The town of Bar, on Montenegro’s short Adriatic coast, guards one of the olive world’s living wonders: the Stara Maslina — the “Old Olive” — an olive tree estimated at well over two thousand years old.
A tree older than the nations around it
Its vast, hollowed, fire-scarred trunk has survived empires, wars and centuries, and it still puts out leaves and fruit. Like Crete’s Olive Tree of Vouves and Spain’s millennial Farga groves, it is a reminder that the olive is almost uniquely long-lived — a single tree can outlast the people, the languages and the borders around it.
A living variety, not just a relic
The Stara Maslina is a Žutica, the variety that carpets this coast and still presses a fruity, characterful oil today. Montenegro’s output is small and mostly local, but its olive culture is ancient and very much alive.
It’s tempting to treat these giants as curiosities for tourists. They’re more than that. A tree that has fruited for two thousand years on a thin coastal strip is a living lesson in why the olive fed hard, dry lands when little else would — and why, as the climate warms, this stubborn, drought-proof tree is spreading far beyond its old Mediterranean home. The ancient olives aren’t the olive’s past; they’re an argument for its future.