Košljun Islet

Why it is worth your time

Košljun is an islet on which time agreed to stop: a wooded dot of barely six hundred metres' circumference amid Punat bay, on which Franciscans have lived in continuity since the 15th century, on the foundations of an older Benedictine abbey. The islet is reached by boat from Punat in five minutes, and the crossing itself is half the experience: the bay is shallow and calm as a lake. On Košljun wait the monastery with the church of the Annunciation, a cloister with cypresses and a museum in which donations and marvels settled for centuries: an ethnographic collection with the island's costumes, an old library of thousands of volumes, Glagolitic manuscripts, even two-headed lambs in jars, for the Franciscans never threw anything away.

Around the monastery leads a forest path with a rosary of chapels, through cypress and laurel. The islet is toured in an hour, but the rhythm says otherwise: this is a place for slowing down. Bring something for the monastery box, dress decently and check the last boat back; Punat with its waterfront and marina rounds off the outing.