The Interior Hill Towns Of Istria, Croatia -- Small, Languid, Some Partially Or Totally Abandoned, And All Yours For The Taking. Part 1

I drove into the one main turning circle in the tiny town of Svetvinčenat, in the Istria Peninsula in the very northern part of coastal Croatia.  The rental car’s GPS was spouting instructions about turning left, right, or perhaps upward, quickly, but I could tell I was as central as one could be here, and instead just parked on the side of the circle where there was plenty of space, easy.  The main square was next door, and across from that were the castle and the church.  Twenty minutes later, I was back at the café next to the circle, having seen the place, ready to have a quick beer and then leave.

This was my first stop in Croatia, having just, just crossed the border from Slovenia, driving south.  I didn’t even have any Croatian money, but an ATM miraculously appeared next to the café and voila, I could now sit there and order an Ožujsko beer, as one should.  One couple in the café seems like visitors; the other half-dozen seemed local.

The Istria peninsula sits at the very northern part of Croatia, sticking out into the Adriatic.  This area is more Italic than Slavic, and has changed hands many times over the years.  It has been common for visitors to this region to first land their warships on the coast, secure that, and only then drive into the interior looking for more booty, but you the modern visitor might want to start off with the interior, or at least make it your focus.

Istria doesn’t get lots of visitors from North America, but the Europeans, especially the Germans and Italians, have discovered it.  It sits on the Adriatic across from Venice, and has everything you like about the Mediterranean, the sun, the wine, the olives, all at lower prices than nearby Italy.  It’s a great place to visit wineries; see my other post here.  Anthony Bourdain, on his show about Croatia, focused squarely on Istria, not Dubrovnik or Split or anyplace famous.

The most popular tourist town, and the best for your photos, is the old Venetian city of Rovinj, a gem.  The most popular place to stay is Poreč, best known for simply being crammed with hotels without much there there.  Both are on the coast, as that’s where most people hang, but the interior towns offer just as much (except for the water part) and much less crowds.   You may see reference to “blue versus green” in Istria, the blue water coastal towns versus the interior green landscape towns.  Except for a visit to Rovinj, I spent all my time in Istria inland, and left very happy.  The simple reason to hit the interior is there are fewer tourists, things are less geared towards them, and you get a more authentic experience.

You’ll need a car.  Yes.  Rent one just for the day if that’s all the time you have.  A GPS is always good, but even a simply map is probably fine, as signs point you not to road numbers, but to the next destination.  Just don’t trust the GPS for directions inside the towns, as those narrow medieval streets confuse it.

Central Istria

Take that small town of Svetvinčenat, an interior town in the central region of the peninsula, where the GPS was sending me gods knows where and I was compelled to override it.  Upon arriving in whatever town, your next order of business is finding a pace to stash the car for a bit, and after many town hops, I can say this was never, never a problem.  In the popular coastal towns, you’ll be directed into pay-parking lots, but in the interior, I only encountered one, in Motovun, and had I been willing to not park so close and hike up, I could have parked for free.

The town center of Svetvinčenat.  And that’s about it.

History has not always been kind to the Istria interior.  After the period of Venice ruling around here, when people like Napoleon and the Ottomans were vying for control, the instability drove many residents out.  The aftermath of both world wars in the twentieth century depopulated the region more, and today’s modern lure from larger cities isn’t helping.  Thus, many towns are dying, or have abandoned areas.  An extreme example is Dvigrad, near Svetvinčenat, wholly abandoned in the mid-17^th century, and now in ruins, waiting for visitors like you to explore them.  The area has been somewhat stabilized, with some dangerous parts closed off and a space for a parking area cleared outside, but that’s it.

The reason there’s a parking area at Dvigrad is because it’s anything but undiscovered.  It’s not overrun with visitors, but there were about twenty others exploring it with me.  There are no explanatory signs or anything else—you just enter and rove around the ruins, the tall walls outside, the central tower of the old castle, and the numerous walls and arches that will make you guess their former purpose.  The town gate is still there, and some of the walls defense towers.  The remains of St. Sophia’s Church are near the center, where the old crypts are now just depressions in the soil.  There were close to 200 homes here.  Now, the town could be a movie set for the next Indiana Jones movie.  Jackie Chan has already been here, filming for “Armor of God”.  It’s not a huge town, but it’s big enough to have fun gamboling about.  Just watch your step, as the town is still crumbling.

The only nod to tourism is the slapdash café out front, by the parking area.  It’s quite separate from the town and seems rather transitory, like a converted mobile home.  It’s solely for visitors like you as you pull into or out of the parking lot.  There’s an open but covered seating area, and a few food times such as fried calamari.  I’m sure soon they’ll be selling tee-shirts, perhaps saying “I got ‘ruin’-ed at Dvigrad!”, but for now, some squid and a beer after playing explorer sounds fine to me.

In Dvigrad, your tour is up to you.

To get there: from the main north~south highway, get off on the road heading east towards Kanfanar.  Or if you’re coming from Rovinj, get on the main east~west road towards the highway, and then pass it heading for Kanfanar.  Either way, you’ll see a sign pointing to Dvigrad, to a turnoff to the north a few km from the highway, just before you get to Kanfanar.  Dvigrad is about 4 or 5 km down that road.

About 14 km driving to the south (also about 14 km from Rovinj, the other direction), will take you to Bale, a bit larger town than some, much more alive, but still easy to handle.  If you’re staying in Rovinj, you can easily take a bus to Bale, but driving is stupid easy and so is parking outside.  Bale’s center is dominated by a tower, as all medieval towns should be, and is surrounded by a few layers of looping narrow streets and old stone/brick buildings that create lots of atmosphere.  The Soardo-Bembo palace, a fifteenth-century Venetian construction, is one of the stars there, but like all hill towns, it’s not so much about the individual sights as it is just being in the town.  Here’s the point in the narrative where the travel writer should strain to verbally evoke the experience of being there, but I bet your imagination is pretty good.

Bale is halfway between being discovered and not, so it still feels like itself.  Lonely Planet says, “Bale draws a spiritually minded and bohemian crowd for its apparently very powerful energy”, because of course we all want to be where the bohemians are.  One can already sense a theme developing here, more towards new age and less pure hipster.

The most popular hang-out with the visitors in Bale is called Kamene Priče, a combo café-performance space that’s as artsy and precious as they come, though it’s stylish enough that you won’t feel like a wanker hanging out here.  Still, one feels the waiter will cry “far out!” after taking an order.  Their menu is as vague as can be created, listing choices such as “vegetarian appetizer” and “fish dish” or “pork or chicken meat”, which means whatever they feel like cooking that day.  This works or it doesn’t.  The customers might as well merely say, “Bring me food,” to the waitstaff, an act I would respect more.

I would give you a report of my meal there, except I had no desire to eat at such as place.  I will say that most online reports are good, and I will send good hopes your way if you try it.  Courage.

Bale is representative of the rapidly growing trend in Istria to bring the arts into the more dormant hill towns to liven them up, and for a few, to save them.  Bale is a bit more touchy-feely than most.  The extreme example is Grožnjan, in the north, a once near-dead small town now utterly turned over to galleries, but you’ll see this everywhere, from the popular places such as Rovinj to smaller places like Bale.  Bale was highly depopulated by its ethnic Italian residents after WWII, but it has bounced back.  You just know that all these places have a jazz festival sometime during the year.

The view from your plate — hyper-fresh oysters and octopus salad

The other trend in Istria is an intense concentration on the food, partly because it has always been rather good, partly because that brings in the gourmet tourists and makes more local money, and partly directly because of the one ingredient, truffles, that just happens to be famous here and thus brings everything else up.  Average Istria restaurants in popular coastal places like Rovinj are already overpriced.  The interior hill towns are a much better value.  Their prices are also rising, but their food level is as well.  When you do more reading about Istria, you’ll see many small towns mentioned solely because a good restaurant is there.  Besides the eateries, there’s also a concentration on selling olive oil, another big local product, to visitors, along with the emergence other non-food locally-made products such as handmade soap that gourmets and general sensualists might buy.

I had lunch one day on the Limski Kanal, a slice of water that juts in to Istria almost straight from the west at about the middle of the peninsula.  It’s not really a canal, and though it’s often called a fjord, it’s not really that either.  It’s just a natural slice of water that has several labels.  Just to the north of where it ends, several water-side eateries are set up.  There’s no town here, just the places to eat along with various vendors set up by the parking lots, selling that olive oil and handmade-soap and such.

Grilled fish platter

Everyone says the Viking restaurant is the best among the two or maybe three (hard to tell) eateries here, so I followed the crowd.  The nearby water is perfect for farming mussels and oysters, and indeed, the oysters I ordered were probably the freshest-tasting I’ve ever had.  Amazing.  The classic preparation for mussels is “na buzaru”, simply cooked with olive oil, wine, and bread crumbs in a pot with whatever herbs they threw in.  I ate an octopus salad, because everyone should, and ordered a large plate of mixed grilled fish.  Portions here are huge (the meat plates I saw go by would feed Fred Flintstone), and so was the bill, about $50 US for lunch.  But they took good care of me, making me a table for one outside on the deck, honoring my request for a half-liter of house wine at a very decent price, and the food was amazing.  I would go back.

Cheaper food is not a problem.  In Svetvinčenat, the first town I mentioned above, the cutest pizza joint in Croatia sat on the main square, by the castle, next to the church.  A large pizza covered with veggies there was about $5.

A few other hills towns that were on my short list, but I didn’t get a chance to visit are Gračišće, a small and sleepy town supposedly with great medieval ambiance, and Pazin, a small but populated and functional town that’s built over a 100 meter-deep chasm, famous because it inspired Jules Vern to set one of his books, Mathias Sandorf, there.

See here for part 2 of the interior hill towns of Istria, Croatia — the North

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