Zadar

Zadar is Croatia's fifth city (75,000 inhabitants) and the historic capital of Northern Dalmatia. Too often overlooked by travellers heading straight from Plitvice to Split, it ranks nonetheless among the loveliest urban discoveries on the Croatian coast — a unique blend of Roman heritage, Venetian urbanism and contemporary art that makes it a stop in its own right on any Dalmatian itinerary.

The Old Town stretches across a narrow 600-metre peninsula, almost entirely surrounded by water, separated from the mainland by a canal. At the historic core, the Roman Forum from the 1st century AD (one of the largest on the eastern Adriatic coast), the pre-Romanesque Church of St Donatus (9th century, circular plan, one of Europe's oldest and most original religious buildings), the Cathedral of St Anastasia (12th-13th centuries, Romanesque), the Venetian walls and their monumental gates (Land Gate, UNESCO-listed in 2017 as part of the "Venetian Defensive Works of the 16th-17th Centuries").

Zadar's contemporary uniqueness rests on two artistic installations conceived by architect Nikola Bašić and inaugurated in 2005. The Sea Organ (Morske orgulje), embedded in the steps of the promenade descending to the Adriatic: 35 polyethylene tubes hidden under the stone, activated by the waves and air pressure, continuously produce a haunting, random melody — a unique sound-art work created by the elements. Beside it, the Greeting to the Sun (Pozdrav Suncu), a 22-metre diameter disc made of 300 photovoltaic panels that charge by day and stage a luminous spectacle at nightfall, synchronised with the positions of the planets. The two installations frame what Alfred Hitchcock is said to have called, in 1964, "the most beautiful sunset in the world" — more beautiful, he added, than the one in Key West, Florida.