CATTARO (Serbo-Croatian Kotor)  , the chief town of an administrative district in Dalmatia, Austria . Pop . (1900) of town, 3021; of commune, 5418 . 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 . Cattaro is strongly fortified, and about 3000 troops are stationed in its neighbourhood . On the seaward side, the defensive works include Castelnuovo (Erceg Novi), which guards 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, form a striking feature in the landscape; and the heights of the Krivoscie or Crevoscia (Krivosije), a group of barren mountains between Montenegro, Herzegovina and the sea, are crowned by small forts . Cattaro is divided almost equally between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox creeds . It is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, with a small cathedral, a collegiate church and several convents . The transit trade with Montenegro is impeded by high tariffs on both sides of the frontier .

Foreign visitors to Montenegro usually land at Cattaro, which is connected by steamer with Trieste and by road with Cettigne . The railway from Ragusa terminates at Zelenika, near Castelnuovo . 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, . Venetians, 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 silver-smiths' work . There is a Benedictine monastery on a small island opposite to Perasto (Perast), 8 m. 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 B.C., and gave its name to the Bocche, then known as Rhizonicus Sinus . Rhizon submitted to Rome in 168 B.C., and about the same time Ascrivium, or Ascruvium, the modern Cattaro, is first mentioned as a neighbouring city .. Justinian built a fortress above Ascrivium in A.U . 535, after expelling the Goths, and a second town probably grew up on the heights round it, for Constantine Porphyry genitus, in the loth century, alludes to " Lower Cattaro " (rb Karw Clesarepa) .

The city was plundered by the .

Saracens in 84o, 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 13th century, 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 18o5, by the treaty of Pressburg, it was assigned to Italy, and was united in 1810 with the 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 head-quarters . See G . Gelcich (Gelcic), Memorie storiche sulle Bocche di Cattaro (Zara, 188o) .