VISIT STARI GRAD

If you visit the Stari Grad, you’ll realize why the world’s most eminent tourist magazines on several occasions ranked our sunniest island among the most desirable destinations in the world. Its crystal clear sea offers not only enjoyment in swimming, but also sights to show only to a select few. The marvelous submarine world of Hvar hides the remains of sunken ships is a true paradise for divers of all categories. Lovers of active tourism will be delighted with biking trails, and the mountaineers with the St. Nicholas peak with a 15th century church. Do not leave Hvar without tasting delicious Paprenjak - famous Stari Grad cookies - brand, cakes made of lavender, and Plavac - Hvar’s most famous wine varietals.

Founded in the year 384 as ancient Greek city of Pharos, Stari Grad is located on the west side of the island, at the bottom of the bay of Stari Grad. A patchwork of medicinal herbs and grape vines make the coloring the renowned Stari Grad Plain. The particularity of this valuable locality lies in the distribution of land parcels, which are, thanks to the stone walls that mark its boundaries “practically unaffected” since ancient times and therefore a unique testimony to the geometric division of the country as it was at the time of the ancient Greeks.
Thanks to this peculiarity, the plain was, along with the historic core of the city, placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2008. The plain itself contains more than 100 archaeological sites, such as the Roman villae rusticae and the Greek towers (Kupinovik, Maslinovik).

Tvrdalj is built in a construction that combines defensive and rural type of architecture (a castle and a palace), which gives it a distinctive look of a fortified Renaissance villa. As indicated by Latin inscriptions, it started out as a summer residence, and left to posterity as an allround microcosm dedicated to the Creator of all things (OMNIVM CONDITORI). The inscriptions also tell us that the poet built Tvrdalj for himself and his friends, but also for travelers and the poor (PRO ITINERANNTIBUS and PRO PAUPERIBUS). Its remarkable notability is a pond with brackish water in which freely live mullets, and a small tower above it, with stone nests for pigeons and holes for sparrows. It is difficult to single out just a few Stari Grad sights we are proud of, but if we had to, we would emphasize precisely these two jewels of both Croatian and world’s cultural treasure.