Luxury Istria
Tours made for you

A charming and sunny respite from the crowded resorts

The picturesque town of Rovinj sits on the western coast of the Istrian peninsula, facing out towards Venice. While one of the Mediterranean’s last true fishing ports, it’s also an important city as the third most populous in Croatia. Thanks to its fetching Adriatic charms and a sunny climate averaging ten sunshine hours a day during the long summer season, Rovinj is proudly one of coastal Istria’s star attractions.

Once an island, the old town now occupies an intriguing oval-shaped peninsula that juts out from the mainland. Its past stretches back through Illyrian, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, and Austrian settlers and today, you can see the remains of medieval defensive walls and one of the old town gates, the 17th century Balbi’s Arch. Inside the town proper, you’ll find steep cobbled streets leading to Venetian piazzas, little artist workshops, fine-dining restaurants, a Baroque palace turned heritage museum, and even a late-Renaissance clock tower. Get a bird’s eye view of all of this from the top of the 60-metre-high bell tower of St. Euphemia’s Cathedral before enjoying a coffee at a chic waterside lounge bar while listening out for the melodious Istriot, an ancient Romance language that’s still spoken by some of Rovinj’s inhabitants today.

Once an unassuming fishing village called Kvarner, the Istrian town of Opatija began its transformation into a fashionable sea side resort in the late when local dignitary Iginio Ritter Von Scarpa built the Palladian Villa Angiolina in the mid 19th century. Word of the village’s spectacular location and agreeable year-round climate spread, and soon the cream of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy came to the Croatian coast to build their own grand villas. Though popular until the twenties, Opatija declined with the fall of the Hapsburg Empire. Today the town has once again returned to favour amongst a cultured set, those seeking a little respite from the more crowded Adriatic resorts amongst the elegantly decaying belle époque villas and rejuvenated hotels dotted between the sparking sea and forested hills.