The rough guide to Croatia

482 Pages·2019·41.852 MB·English

by  Bousfield, Jonathan

INSIDE THIS BOOK
START YOUR JOURNEY WITH ROUGH GUIDES
INTRODUCTION What to see, what not to miss, itineraries and more
BASICS Pre-departure tips and practical information
THE GUIDE Comprehensive, in-depth guide to Croatia, with regional highlights and
full-colour maps throughout
CONTEXTS History and music, plus recommended books and a useful language
section
We’ve fl agged up our favourite places – a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric café, a special
restaurant – throughout the guide with the ★ symbol TRUSTED TRAVEL GUIDES Since 1982, our books have helped over 35 million
travellers explore the world with accurate, honest and informed travel writing.
Croatia chapters
0 50
ITALY LJUBLJANA Varaždin HUNGARY kilometres
Bjelovar Pécs
SLOVENIA 1
Trieste ZAGREB
Rijeka Karlovac Sava K2utina NaSšliacteina OsDirjaevka POCKET ROUGH GUIDES “Best of” section, essential itineraries and a unique
3
Slunj pull-out map featuring every sight and listing in the guide. Hip, handy and
Vinkovci Danube perfect for short trips and weekend breaks.
Pula Cres Krk
4
N Rab Banja
Luka
Pag BOSNIA - Tuzla Sava
HERCEGOVINA
SERBIA
Zadar
Drniš
Ancona 5 SARAJEVO
Vodice
Split
Imotski
ADRIATIC 6
ITALY SEA Hvar Mostar
7
DIGITAL Choose from our easy-
Vis
to-use ebooks and great-value
Korˇcula MONTENEGRO
Ston Snapshots to read on your tablet,
8
phone or e-reader.
Dubrovnik PODGORICA
1 Zagreb 4 The Kvarner Gulf 7 The southern Dalmatian Islands
2 Inland Croatia 5 Northern Dalmatia 8 Dubrovnik and around ROUGHGUIDES.COM Buy all our
3 Istria 6 Split and the south Dalmatian coast latest ebooks and get inspired
with travel features, quizzes
and more.
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This seventh edition published March 2016
Croatia_7_284700_InsideCover.indd 1 30/11/15 11:48 am
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO
Croatia
written and researched by
Jonathan Bousfield
roughguides.com

INTRODUCTION 3
Contents
INTRODUCTION 4
Where to go 8 Things not to miss 14
Author picks 11 Itineraries 24
When to go 12
BASICS 26
Getting there 27 Festivals 42
Getting around 31 Sports and the outdoors 45
Accommodation 34 Shopping 47
Food and drink 37 Travel essentials 48
The media 41
THE GUIDE 54
1 Zagreb 54 5 Northern Dalmatia 238
2 Inland Croatia 92 6 Split and the south Dalmatian coast 278
3 Istria 132 7 The southern Dalmatian Islands 324
4 The Kvarner Gulf 180 8 Dubrovnik and around 386
CONTEXTS 430
History 431 Books 457
A history of Croatia in ten albums 455 Croatian 460
SMALL PRINT & INDEX 469
OPPOSITE ZADAR PREVIOUS PAGE ZLATNI RAT, BOL, BRAČ
4 INTRODUCTION
Introduction to
Croatia
Despite spending the last decade as Europe’s fastest-rising holiday
destination, Croatia still doesn’t feel like a place that has been thoroughly
worked over by the tourist industry. With new developments kept on a
human scale and businesses retaining a pronounced local flavour, the
Adriatic coast emphatically retains a unique character. Whether you’re
interested in unspoiled Mediterranean islands, edgy urban culture, Game of
Thrones location tours or simply splashing around in the Adriatic’s
famously clear waters, Croatia is a place to discover many different
landscapes and experiences.
A renewed respect for natural ingredients has become the watchword of Croatian cuisine,
with locally sourced foodstuffs, wines and olive oils standing up increasingly well to
globalization. Croatia has a growing reputation for niche festivals – not just in the
party-the-weekend-away music events held on beaches and in ancient forts up and down
the coast, but also in the mushrooming number of arts festivals and small-town cultural
shindigs. And in Zagreb and elsewhere, a raft of new galleries and art attractions has
given the country a cool and contemporary sheen.
Croatia is blessed with a wealth of natural riches, boasting almost 2000km of rocky,
indented shore and more than a thousand islands, many blanketed in luxuriant
vegetation. Even during the heavily visited months of July and August there are still
enough off-the-beaten-track islands, quiet coves and stone-built fishing villages to make
you feel as if you’re visiting Europe at its most unspoiled. There’s plenty in the way of
urbane glamour too, if that’s what you’re after, with swanky hotels, yacht-filled harbours
and cocktail bars aplenty – especially in à-la-mode destinations such as Dubrovnik and
Hvar. Wherever you go, though, you’ll find that Croatia retains an appeal for
independent travellers that’s in short supply at more package-oriented destinations
elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Most budget and mid-range accommodation is still in
the form of private apartments, and there has been an explosion in the number of
ABOVE DUBROVNIK OPPOSITE MOTOVUN, ISTRIA
INTRODUCTION 5
backpacker-friendly hostel-type establishments in the major cities. When it comes to
seaside-hugging campsites, Croatia is in a league of its own.
The country has certainly come a long way since the early 1990s, when within the
space of half a decade – almost uniquely in contemporary Europe – it experienced the
collapse of communism, a war of national survival and the securing of independence.
Nearly twenty-five years on, visitors will be struck by the tangible sense of pride that
independent statehood has brought. National culture is a far from one-dimensional
affair, however, and much of the country’s individuality is due to its geographical
position straddling the point at which the sober Central European virtues of hard
work and order collide with the spontaneity, vivacity and taste for the good things in
life that characterize the countries of southern Europe – a cultural blend of
Mitteleuropa and Mediterranean that gives Croatia its particular flavour. Not only
that, but the country also stands on one of the great faultlines of European
civilization, the point at which the Catholicism of Central Europe meets the Islam
and Orthodox Christianity of the East. Though Croats traditionally see themselves as
a Western people, distinct from the other South Slavs who made up the former state
of Yugoslavia, many of the hallmarks of Balkan culture – patriarchal families,
hospitality towards strangers and a fondness for grilled food – are as common in
Croatia as in any other part of southeastern Europe, suggesting that the country’s
relationship with its neighbours is closer than many Croats may admit.
Villach & Salzburg Maribor, Graz & Vienna
ITALY SLOVENIA Varaždin
Krapina Lepoglava
LJUBLJANA Sava
ZAGORJE
E71
Venice Trieste ZAGREB
Samobor
ŽUMBERAK Velika
Gorica
Umag RISNJAK TUROPOLJE
NATIONAL
PARK
NovigRrPaoodvreinčj ISTRIAPazin OpatijaRijeKkrak GCOrRikSvKeIn NV i cio na v o iKd OolTsAkiR E65 Ogulin oKra an KSaE71lrulonvjac Sisak
NATIONABLR IPJAURNKI Cres Town ToKwrkn Senj
Pula PLITVICE LAKES
Cres Kvarner Gulf RabTRoawbn LEEVBIT NVNPAEAONLRTREKAITOBTHINITOEARNLNAL PARLKIKA Bihać
Lošinj Karlobag
N Mali Lošinj Pag PAKLENICA
Gospić NATIONAL
PARK
Pag TowNnin MAGISTER65ALA DALM
A
Zadar TI
Ugljan A
Dugi Otok KRKA
NATIONAL
PašmBainograd- PARK Knin
na-moru
Murter E71
Ancona KORNATI VodiceE65
NATIONAL PARK Šibenik
Trogir Solin
Split
A D R I AT I C Šolta Supetar
S E A
Bol
Hvar Town
ITALY
Vis
Vis Town
Pescara
0 50
kilometres
Čakovec Budapest Budapest
Metres
KPopOrivDnicaRAVDrIavNa A HUNGARY D eabnu 11550000000
Pécs 200
Bjelovar
100
Virovitica
0
Slatina
LONANTJUSKKRuOEt iPPnAOaRLKJE Daruvar SLAVONIA Drava Osijek NKAOTPUARČEK PI ARRITK
Našice
Sava Novska
Đakovo Vukovar
Požega
Bačka Palanka
Slavonski Vinkovci
E70 Brod Danube
E70
Banja Luka Belgrade
BOSNIA - Sava
HERCEGOVINA Tuzla
SERBIA
Travnik
Zenica
Bugojno
SARAJEVO
Sinj
Cetina Imotski
Omiš
Brela
BIOKOVO
Brač Makarska NPAATRUKRE Mostar
Međugorje
Hvar
Korčula Ploče
Vela Korčula
Luka Town Pelješac MONTENEGRO
Peninsula
Ston
MLJET
NATIONAL
Lastovo PARK Mljet DubrovnikMAGISTER65ALA
Cavtat
PPooddggoorriiccaa
8 INTRODUCTION
FACT FILE Where to go
• Croatia (Hrvatska in
Croatian) is a crescent- Croatia’s underrated capital Zagreb is a typical Central
shaped country of 4.3 European metropolis, combining elegant nineteenth-
million people. Roughly 90
century buildings with plenty of cultural diversions and
percent of the population
are Croats, who speak a a vibrant café life. It’s also a good base for trips to the
Slavic language akin to undulating hills and charming villages of the rural
Serbian and Bosnian, and
Zagorje region to the north, and to the well-preserved
mostly practise the
Catholic Christian faith. Baroque town of Varaždin to the northeast.
There is also a sizeable The rest of inland Croatia provides plenty of
Serbian population (about
opportunities for relaxed exploring. Stretching east
4.4 percent of the total),
who largely belong to the from Zagreb, the plains of Slavonia form the richest
Orthodox Church. agricultural parts of Croatia, with seemingly endless
• Politically, Croatia is a corn and sunflower fields fanning out from handsome,
single-chamber Habsburg-era provincial towns such as Osijek and
parliamentary Vukovar – the latter, almost totally destroyed during the
democracy with a directly
1991–95 war, is now undergoing something of a
elected – though nowadays
largely ceremonial – renaissance. Lying between Zagreb and the coast, and
president as head of state. easily visited from either, are the deservedly hyped
• The average Croat Plitvice Lakes, an enchanting sequence of forest-fringed
consumes over 5kg of turquoise pools linked by miniature waterfalls.
coffee a year (almost twice Croatia’s lengthy stretch of coastline, together with its
as much as the average
islands, is big enough to swallow up any number of
Brit), and spends an
estimated 183 hours a year tourists. At the northern end, the peninsula of Istria
drinking it. contains many of the country’s most developed resorts,
• Croatia’s Janica Kostelić along with old Venetian towns like Poreč and Rovinj,
is the most successful and the raffish port of Pula, home to some impressive
female Olympic skier of all
Roman remains. Inland Istria is characterized by sleepy
time, winning a total of four
gold and two silver medals hilltop villages, often dramatically situated, such as
at the 2002 and 2006 Motovun, Grožnjan, Roč and Hum – each mixing
Winter Olympics.
medieval architecture with rustic tranquillity.
• The total length of The island-scattered Kvarner Gulf, immediately south
Croatia’s dramatic mainland of Istria, is presided over by the city of Rijeka, a
coastline is 1777km. The
hard-edged port city with an energetic cultural life.
highest mountain is
Dinara (1831m) on the Close by are a clutch of resorts that were chic high-
border with Bosnia- society hangouts in the late nineteenth century and
Hercegovina, and the
retain a smattering of belle époque charm, including
longest river is the Sava,
which rises in Slovenia and quaint, diminutive Lovran and the larger, more
passes through Croatia for developed Opatija. Not far offshore, the Kvarner islands
562km before joining the
of Cres, Lošinj and Krk have long been colonized by the
Danube in the Serbian
capital Belgrade. package-holiday crowds, although each has retained its
fair share of quiet seaside villages and tranquil coves,
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP ROVINJ; VILLAGE HARBOUR ON THE PELJEŠAC PENINSULA; MARKET STALL IN ISTRIA