More Of The Interior Hill Towns Of Istria, Croatia — Small, Languid, Some Partially Or Totally Abandoned, And All Yours For The Taking, Part 2

Everything seems to be only five or ten kilometers apart in Istria.  All day, when I looked at my next destination on the map, it always seemed to be about ten clicks away, as the bird flies.  Driving, however, wasn’t much harder.  In the northern part of Croatia’s Istria peninsula, one could hop to a half dozen spots in a single day easily.  I recommend doing just that.

It doesn’t quite matter where on the Istria peninsula you are staying–everything is in day-trip driving distance.  You don’t even have to get up early to squeeze things in.  Most people stay near the central area on the coast, around Rovinj (best, but pricier and limited) or Porecč (cheaper and plentiful, but boring).  I was staying just across the border to the north, in Slovenia.  No matter; none are more than half-hour away, even with a border crossing.

Istria is at the very northern part of Croatia, on the Adriatic, and has most things you like about the Mediterranean.  If you like anything Italian, you’re most of the way there, as the food, the architecture, and the local dialect are similar, due to Venice having either founded or ruled so many towns here.  The prices are better, especially compared to Venice, although there’s a growing trend in Istria for very high-end dining, much of it based on the local truffles.  Driving is a breeze, as distances are short, there’s always plenty of parking, and road signs point to the next destination.  You’ll need a car, even for a day.  Most little towns have obvious parking areas just outside, and you then walk in and explore.  Scooters work well too, and it’s a favorite place for bicyclists.

Absolute random building in Grožnjan

I had already spent a day driving around the central region of Istria (see my post here for that story), and now I was tackling the north.  My first stop was Grožnjan, my vote for Canonical Istrian Hill Town of the Year, as it sums up the good, bad, and undecided effects of being a hill town and being a tourist.  Let’s check this, noting that history has not been kind to all the towns.  Hill towns are cute and picturesque and quaint and we never want them to change but they’re also old, backward, isolated, high-maintenance, and offer little opportunity for the residents.  The period right after WWII was only the most recent episode of many when numerous hill town residents essentially abandoned their places.

There is a question of what should be done with somewhat-abandoned towns.  Some, like Dvigrad in the central region, stayed abandoned for a few hundred years and are now ruins to explore.  Others are seeing new functions, which brings us back to Grožnjan, my first stop today.  Stay with me.  Grožnjan is an old Venetian town that then became Austrian, then Italian, then Yugoslavian.  During the Yugo period, a good deal of the Italic population of Istria moved north to Trieste, abandoning their towns.  Communism didn’t help things, and so more were abandoned, which is why so many are dead or near-dead now.  A few up north here are becoming what one might use the phrase “artists colonies” to describe, if one indeed usually tosses off terms such as that.  It sounds both cool and a bit precious, but let’s remember that there’s little else one can do with a near-abandoned hill town but invite the artists to move in.  Let’s just hope the counter-culture, the freethinkers, and the bohemians will join them.

Grožnjan was declared an open city for artists back in 1965 (or 1956, according to another source.  Someone has a typo), but I think it took a while to catch on.  Someone wrote in 2013 that it had thirty galleries, and of course it has a summer jazz festival, as any artists colony would, as jazz is the official music of the artists everywhere.  Grožnjan is also a home to that potent musical juggernaut, the International Cultural Center of Young Musicians.

It took me a few minutes after arriving to discover just how transformed Grožnjan is.  Galleries are everywhere now, and near everyone on the street is a tourist.  I stopped first at the TI, asking uselessly about a pubic bathroom.  No.  The next three things I saw were truffle shops—they’re everywhere here and at so many other places I stopped on this day.  A few shops sell tourist things like local honey and artisan handmade soap and such that no one needs but buys for gifts.

Grožnjan at least is appealing, if you can escape the tourists.  I was standing in a cute courtyard trying to take photos of the two opposite walls and I couldn’t.  Too many people walking into the shot, both ends.  The town was small, but because it’s maintained, it’s cute and photogenic.  There’s nothing special to do here, as the town is the attraction, so one just wanders around and pokes into the galleries.

A few cafés sit on that first lane where I entered, including Bastia, the most central and popular.  The “Kaya Energy Bar & Design”, is supposed to be a wine bar that has cheese plates, irresistible to me, but I learned on this trip that there are no wine bars per se in this part of the world.  There are only cafés where some visitor has noticed they sell wine and thus can label them thusly.  Kaya sits at the very back of the town, a large peaceful courtyard where everyone was drinking coffee.

The hill towns announce themselves from a distance, and this is your view.

As you drive around Istria, the little hill towns in the north look more like archetypical hill towns than in other parts of the peninsula.  The towns announce themselves from many kilometers away–you’ll see them across some valley and wonder if that’s your next destination.  They mostly looked rocking, some of them amazing.  Grožnjan, for instance, is rather canonical from afar, a hilltop thing with a single, central, church steeple pocking up.

My next stop is Završje, not even five miles away as a drone flies.  I kept passing groups of cyclists, as I would all day.  They ride in packs, all dressed in the serious cyclist outfits.

Završje gives you a particular feeling because it’s near death, a tiny town almost uninhabited.  It’s a dramatic setting that I quite liked.  No artists.  To approach, one drives down a ridge, descending while enjoying a smashing view of the place.  At the town entrance, a small parking lot by a church held a half-dozen cars, all of them visitors.  A large sign next to the area described all the attractions of the town, starting with the old school right behind the sign, six or so buildings in the town, and some mosaics in a chapel a bit outside.

I walked upwards into the heart, immediately encountering an old man, a local.  He was sitting on a low stone wall, seemingly doing nothing.  Everyone around here says “Dober dan” (“good day”) as a greeting (same in Slovenian).  I greeted the man, and found him friendly and seemingly glad I had the manners to say hello.  He must be used to visitors brushing by.

Four Italian visitors were just twenty steps behind me.  I’m taking a photo of a tiny, old, stylish car somehow parked in the back of the church, the car looking great by the stone steps, and I’m trying to get the angle right before the Italians wander into the shot.  We would stay within twenty steps of each other while we all were exploring the tiny town, no matter how hard we tried to shake each other.

The church in Završje, where this old car just seemed appropriate

Around the other side of the church, the road slopped downwards and the town started to run out.  That’s it.  I retraced, ditching the Italians, and broke to the side by some old stone walls, going through what were now ruins.  Back by the church, I passed a few houses clearly occupied, including one with a new car parked in front.  People still live here.  The atmosphere is great, and I hope the residents are getting huge tax breaks for staying around.

My next town (blimey, I could do eight of these in a day) was Oprtalj, only 5k away if I could jump there.  One drives along a beautiful row of skinny cypress trees to a circle at the bottom of the hill that seemed to call out as a parking space, and thus I stopped.  There’s a parking lot up top but it’s often full.  Across from that is a classic architecture open building, the loggia, which was the old Venetian public hall.  It’s clearly the Old Thing in town.  Rectangular dark orange hall with a series of arch entrances in front and arch windows in the back.  A mosaic on the back wall along with a view over the valley below.   I walked all the way through the town in about twenty minutes.  A bell tower, a church across from it, and some cars moving slowly around.

The central area has a few shops that can only be described as cute, but I hung by the loggia, with its marvelous views overlooking the valley.  The area by the parking lot has a café in the shade, right on the city wall with that view.  Down on the sloping road out of town is the Loggia Matka (the Loggia Tavern), which seems to be the best restaurant in town.  Great space, but I went to the café up top on the wall, as it was hopping.  It was packed with bicyclists, at least twenty, and surely not all from the same group.  They’re all taking a break and I joined them, getting a Ratler beer, flavored with grapefruit.

I’m heading to Motovun, the star of the area, but before I hit it, a few detours.  Livade, not even 5k to the south, is a small town that seems to only consist of one block in each of the four directions of a central roundabout.  Zigante, a local chain store that sells truffle products all over Istria, started here in 2000 and still has its original base store here.  Stop in for samples, because where else can you taste truffles for free?

About 5k southeast of Livade (on the same road as the Zigante store) is the Ipša Estate, known for their excellent olive oil.  Just keep driving out of Livade and follow the signs pointing to Ipša, but be prepared for narrow, one-lane hilly, country roads.

Very near Motovun are two excellent places for wine tasting, the Tomaž winery and the Fakin winery.  You can read about them and a few other wineries around the area, easily reachable, in another post of mine, here.

All around, you will catch views of Motovun, because it’s the highest hill town around.  It’s also by far the most popular in this area.  This was the only one where I saw tours, buses and such.  It’s dramatic, with its height, its intact town walls, its history as an old Venetian town.  It seems more medieval than the others.  You could imagine Game of Thrones filming here.  I don’t quite get why it’s so more popular, except perhaps that one place had to be famous and this is it.  Mario Andretti was born here!  Anthony Bourdain ate truffles here!

Motovun is far from being undiscovered

It’s the only place today I needed to pay to park.  I was lucky; there was space where I could drive most of the way up and park.  If it’s crowded, you’ll park farther down and have a worse hike.  It’s a big hill.  Near the gate in the wall that’s the only town entrance, the shops start.  Some art, not much.  Wine and fun foods.  Truffles.  I stopped in a tiny, tiny shop for a sample and half an hour later, the taste was still strong in my mouth.  Truffles are damn good.

Check out the Venetian lion over the first gate as you walk in.  You’ll go by an outdoor café with brilliant views out the walls and then hit the main gate, with another café to the side.  The inside of the town is rather pleasant, with a central courtyard and a church, as is proper.  The ramparts can, and should be, traversed, as it’s fun and the views are excellent.  Again, there are no main sights except the town itself.

The hotel Kaštel is the main industry in town and the only hotel inside the walls.  Its Palladio restaurant in a central courtyard is quite good, and that’s where I ate dinner.  It has a reputation of being expensive but a meal of mushroom soup, bruschetta with truffles, and house-made fuži pasta tubes with fresh black truffle slices, together with a glass of wine, cost me 185 kuna ($28.15).  I think that’s a bargain for truffle dishes, and it was more food than I could eat.  (Don’t order the bruschetta with less than three people.)  Plenty of restaurants are around, most just outside the walls, and probably all of them have truffle dishes.  Prices go up during peak truffle season to I don’t know what, but the normal prices are surprisingly doable.

Handmade pasta with truffles in Motovun

That was all for me for the day, but with a bit more energy and a bit less wine, I could have hit a few more hill towns.  There are many other areas in the peninsula to explore, for other days.

See Part 1 of The Hill Towns of Istria, the central region, here.

And check out wine tasting opportunities in Istria here.

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