No, we didn’t actually meet Professor Albus Dumbledore (#1, aka Richard Harris) at St. Donat’s Church in Zadar. This was part of a “Harry Potter Day” scavenger hunt for children. But it’s still fun to imagine!
From Zagreb, we headed back to the Dalmatian coast to find warmer weather, and of course the beautiful Adriatic Sea. We took the bus from Zagreb to Zadar on a particularly cold morning. For the first few hours of the drive, it was a snowstorm. As we finally made it through the mountains – and with some very long tunnels, I really do mean through the mountains — which line the spine of Croatia, we saw the sun and warmer temperatures as we approached the coast.
Our Air B&B host kindly met us at the bus station and took us to our apartment, right in the old town of Zadar. She showed us around the apartment, offered lots of advice, and left us a gift of water in the fridge and some homemade cherry liquor. It was a lovely apartment for our nineteen days in Zadar. We spent our days relaxing while Evan worked on the blog and Sara spent hours working on our travel arrangements for the next three months. But we also enjoyed exploring this historic city. Here are some highlights of our stay in Zadar.
First Agenda for Tourists in Zadar: Find the Sea Organ and Greetings to the Sun. Old Zadar is a peninsula reaching into the Adriatic Sea. At the northwestern corner of the peninsula are two very modern installations that entertain visitors and locals alike:
- The Sea Organ is built into the concrete walkway along the sea. It’s powered by waves as they hit the side. If the water is very quiet, there’s little to hear, but when it’s hit by the waves from the boats or a choppy sea, the natural sounds of the organ can become quite loud. Visitors love to sit on the terraced concrete, watching the sunset over the islands and listening to the organ.
- Greetings to the Sun: After the sun sets and the sky darkens, the Sea Organ still plays, but your vision turns to the “Greetings to the Sun.” Just up from the Sea Organ, this looks like a huge, circular solar panel built into the concrete walkway. People walk over it, dance upon it, or gather for group selfies. During the daylight, it looks blue as it just soaks up the sun’s energy. But after dark, it provides a mesmerizing, colorful lightshow. A few much smaller discs, at distance from the big one, represent the planets, but they’re so much smaller, and the light shows much more limited or not functioning at all, so that only the big one claims your attention. But it is really fun to watch the colorful random lightshow after sunset.
Walking Zadar: Much of the Old Town of Zadar reminds us of Rovinj and Split, with pedestrian areas, white stone walkways and ruins from the days of the Romans and later the Venetians. Ruins of the Roman era Forum are preserved near the Church of St. Donat and the Benedictine Convent. It’s fun to watch children playing on these centuries-old ruins while their parents enjoy a coffee break in the sun. You can still walk the old walls on the northern side of the peninsula, but those on the south are gone. Once there were great walls and the sea to the south, scattered with jagged rock piles to dissuade attackers from the sea. Now there’s a lovely walkway along the “Riva,” the shoreline leading northwest toward the Sea Organ and Greeting to the Sun.
Walking Tour around the old town of Zadar with our guide Dorja (pronounced DOOR-yah). We met her at the “Greetings to the Sun” at the northwesternmost point of the peninsula. From there she led us on a circuitous route through the town, sharing her wealth of historical information. In the end we had walked the entire peninsula, which isn’t all that large to begin with, but the history she shared with us was rich: from the very early Illyrian settlements of the Liburnian tribe (from 9th century BCE: known primarily through archeological research), to the Romans (easier to find with all their stone roads, buildings and viaducts), and later the Venetians who dominated Zadar for centuries, followed by the Austrians, the French briefly, then more Italians. At times, Croatia was its own kingdom, but in the 20th century it became part of Yugoslavia until it suffered in the “Homeland War” and finally achieved independence in the 1990’s.
Visit to the city of Nin: We enjoyed Dorja, so we took her up on her offer of another tour. This time she drove us to Nin, a small town some miles north of Zadar with its own long and important history. There is a copy of Mestrovic’s Gregory of Nin statue here. The original statue in Split was much larger, but since Gregory was the Bishop of Nin, his monument here is quite appropriate. A great deal of archeological work here has provided artifacts that tell the long story of the region, some of it in Nin’s own little museum here and much more in the Archeological Museum of Zadar.
Eating Out for Great Food. We’ve enjoyed really outstanding meals in Zadar, and the service has been warm and welcoming. We visited these three favorites more than once.
- 4 Kantuna: Great seafood, pizza, and ambiance: http://restaurant4kantuna.com
- Restaurant Bruschetta: Lovely seafood, Italian dishes, and outstanding Bruschetta. We especially loved the Pesto & Smoked Salmon Bruschetta. So Good! www.Bruschetta.hr/en/
- Trattoria Mediterraneo: More great seafood and Italian dishes. And we loved the homemade red wine. The owner was charming and welcoming. Trattoria Mediterraneo – Zadar | Restaurant near me | Book now (eatbu.com)
A Permanent Exhibition of Religious Art is overseen by the Nuns of the Benedictine Convent of St. Mary: Dorja referred to this museum as “visiting the nuns.” It’s quite a rich collection of Medieval and Renaissance religious art collected from the area of Croatia and Bosnia. Huge paintings, carvings in wood, and a great many reliquaries: containers for relics mostly of saints. Reliquaries are highly decorated containers, sometimes box shaped, or a box with a peaked top shaped like a church. Others take a shape from what they hold. In this collection one holds the head of a Pope, shaped as a bust. Another, containing bones from the foot, is shaped as a shoe for a foot. A number are shaped as lower arm and hand, holding the bones of a saint’s arm. This collection includes a great deal of gold and silver, so it’s often known as the “Gold & Silver Treasury” of the church. Sorry, no photos were allowed. We found this video online if you’d like to take a look: Click Here to see The Gold and Silver Treasury.
Archeological Museum of Zadar: Right next to the Church of St. Mary is large modern building housing this museum. With three floors of exhibits: Third Floor: Prehistory with focus on the tribes in the area, particularly the Liburnians. Second Floor: The era of Roman domination. First floor: Focus on Medieval artifacts, particularly on church architecture. This is a very rich collection, beautifully displayed. Well worth a visit.
To Preko and St. Michael’s Fortress: One morning we took an early ferry ride to Preko, a town on Ugljan Island, just across the water from Zadar. We walked through the quiet town and then began climbing up to a ruined fortification and church of St. Michael on the island’s 2nd highest peak. It’s a paved road all the way, so walking was pretty easy, but it’s quite an elevation, so there are steep climbs. We made it to the fortress about noon, but it’s all ruins, and the only “door” to the inside was locked. Near it, however, was an opening in the rock wall about the size of a window through which we climbed in inside. We chatted for a while with two Croatian bikers who found the window access and pointed it out to us. From the walls of this fortress we had gorgeous views 360 degrees, over Zadar, the islands and the beautiful Adriatic Sea.
The Museum of Ancient Glass tells the history of glassmaking with attention to the Balkans, Rome and the Eastern Mediterranean, with many artifacts from archeological work here and abroad. Our visit ended with a nice demonstration: we watched as a glass blower recreated a small glass vase similar to those found nearby in antiquity.
