Omiš. Things to do, map and hidden gems

Mirabela, also called Peovica, is the smaller of the two Omiš fortresses, built in the 13th century on a crag right above the old town. From here the pirates of Omiš watched the channel toward Brač and the mouth of the Cetina: when a Venetian or Ragusan sail appeared on the horizon, a signal fire on the tower roused the whole town. Their fast, shallow boats, the sagittae or arrow ships, could then slip up the river where tall ships could not follow. The climb from the old town takes about ten minutes up narrow stone steps; at the top are four levels of tower and a lookout over the roofs of Omiš, the Cetina canyon and the open sea. The fortress was damaged in the 1988 earthquake and restored, and in summer people climb it as much for the sunset as for the history. Bring water and grippy shoes, as centuries of feet have polished the steps smooth. A small entrance fee is charged at the top of the stairway, and the finest light comes an hour before sunset, when the stone glows orange and Brač darkens across the water.

On the right bank of the Cetina, in the Priko quarter, stands the oldest and most important building of Omiš: the little church of St Peter from the 10th century, one of the best preserved monuments of early Croatian architecture on the entire coast. It is small enough to fit in the palm of a glance, single-naved, with a barrel vault and a dome over the middle, built of roughly dressed stone in the age of the Croatian native rulers, when Omiš was the border between coastal Croatia and the princes of the Neretva. In the 18th century a Glagolitic seminary worked beside it, a school where priests learned to say mass in Old Church Slavonic and to write the Glagolitic script; that quiet classroom by the river educated generations of the Poljica clergy. The church opens occasionally, for feasts and announcements, but the greater part of its power is outside anyway: a cube, a dome and a thousand years, all within twenty paces. Come across the bridge from the old town, a five-minute walk, and look at it in late afternoon, when the low sun draws every mason's stroke out of the stone.

Fortica, known locally as Starigrad, sits on a 262-metre ridge of the Omiška Dinara and guards the biggest view in central Dalmatia: the mouth of the Cetina, the roofs of Omiš, the Poljica hinterland, and across the channel Brač, Hvar and on a clear day Šolta. It was built in the 15th century, when the Ottoman threat pushed the town's defences from the shore up into the hills, and from this height no army could approach unseen. A marked trail leads up from Omiš through the hamlet of Baučići: allow one hour to ninety minutes, in summer strictly early morning or evening, with at least a litre of water per person. Hikers can take a steeper variant straight up the rock. At the top wait restored ramparts and a small tower; the entrance fee is symbolic and the view, as they say in Omiš, is charged by no one. Pack a windbreaker, the ridge is almost always breezy. If you would rather not hike, drive to the village of Stanići and walk an easier half hour from there. Sunset from Fortica is among the finest on the Adriatic, just bring a headlamp for the way down.

In its final kilometres the Cetina cuts through the Dinara massif and enters the sea in the middle of town: few European rivers end so dramatically. The canyon behind Omiš is squeezed between cliffs more than a hundred metres high, and the water runs emerald and cold, because the river rises beneath the Dinara at 385 metres and travels 101 kilometres to the sea. The easiest way to feel it is from the riverside promenade in town, where the cliffs open like a gate; the deepest is from the water, by raft, kayak or the excursion boats that run upstream to Radmanove Mlinice, an old watermill in the greenery. Golden eagles and the odd griffon vulture circle above the gorge, and fig trees grow straight out of the rock along the banks. Walkers can follow the trail toward the village of Slime to a lookout above a bend of the river. Early morning is the calmest hour, when the water turns to a mirror; on summer afternoons the maestral wind arrives, bringing cool air and sailboats to the river mouth.

The little church of the Holy Spirit is one of those small rooms where a town's history is felt more strongly than in the great ones: a single-nave Renaissance building of the 16th century, it stands beside the former town hall and for centuries belonged to the confraternity that cared for the poor and buried the dead. The plain facade with its bell gable and modest portal is easy to walk past, but the interior surprises with its calm: white walls, a wooden altar and light falling through narrow windows onto stone worn smooth by generations of knees. Today the church lives a second life as a space for exhibitions, small concerts and summer evenings of chamber music, when barely fifty people fit inside and every note has its place. If the door is open, step in even for a minute; if not, look up at the old inscriptions built into the facade. It lies on the way of every old-town stroll, twenty paces from the main lane, and it shows the scale of old Omiš best: a town where even the most solemn space was small, stone upon stone, pressed against the cliff.

Gata is the heart of Poljica: a village on a terrace above the Cetina canyon, some fifteen minutes' drive from Omiš, which for centuries was the centre of the Republic of Poljica, a peasant state with its own statute of 1440 and a duke elected every year. Today Gata is a quiet place of stone houses, olive groves and a church, but history reads on every step: beside the parish church stands the memorial to the victims of 1942, when Italian fascists killed more than a hundred villagers in a single day, and from the village edge opens a view of the canyon worth the trip even without a single story. From Gata a ten-minute walk leads to the monument of Mila Gojsalić, the Poljica heroine carved by Ivan Meštrović; her silhouette above the abyss is the most photographed motif of the whole hinterland. Come toward evening, when the stone glows, and join the visit with dinner in one of the Poljica konobas along the road: lamb and soparnik, the Poljica chard pie protected at European level, are homemade here, not touristic.

Rafting on the Cetina is the gentlest way into the canyon, which is why families love it: the rapids are class two to three, lively enough for laughter and spray, mild enough that children from about five or six can ride along. The standard trip starts upstream near Penšići or Zadvarje and runs three to four hours down to Radmanove Mlinice or all the way to town, depending on the water level. Calm pools for swimming alternate with short staircases of rapids and passages beneath dripping cliffs; along the way the guides point out a cave you enter by swimming and rocks to jump from, for those who want to. Even in mid August the water is fresh, around 15 to 18 degrees, so the wetsuits the operators provide are welcome. Bring swimwear, sandals that stay on your feet and a dry shirt for afterwards; phones travel in a waterproof barrel. Departures run in the morning and early afternoon, booking a day ahead is enough, and the finest months are June and September, when the river is generous and the crowds are gone.

The zipline above the Cetina canyon is among the best known in Croatia: eight steel cables totalling about 2,100 metres, with the longest run over 700 metres and heights up to 150 metres above the river. The adventure begins with a short drive and walk from Omiš to the launch point above the gorge, where instructors demonstrate braking and body position on two short practice cables; then come three hours of crossing from one side of the canyon to the other, the emerald Cetina far below your feet and eagles at eye level. Speeds reach around fifty kilometres per hour, yet the feeling is strangely calm: wind, the hum of the trolley, and the sheer breadth of the landscape. You need closed shoes and a little fitness for the short walks between cables; children can usually ride from age ten with an adult. Tours run from spring to autumn, and in summer the morning departures before the heat are the most pleasant. A camera may come along only if firmly strapped, and you will remember the views better than any footage anyway.

Planovo is the viewpoint for those who want the postcard view but do not have a whole morning for Fortica: a grassy, rocky shelf on the slope of the Omiška Dinara above town, reached by a marked trail from the centre in twenty to thirty minutes of climbing. From up here Omiš is seen whole for the first time: red roofs squeezed between cliff and sea, the green snake of the Cetina sliding out of its canyon, Velika plaža like a pale crescent and Brač across the channel. The trail starts behind the old town and climbs through maquis and pines; the ground is stony, so even this short walk wants closed shoes and water, and in summer the hour you choose means everything: morning before eight or early evening. Planovo is also the first station on the way to Fortica, so you can decide on the spot whether to continue higher. Photographers love the blue hour after sunset most, when the town lights come on and the sky above Brač still smoulders; a headlamp for the descent is then not a luxury but a condition.

The Fortica via ferrata turns the cliff above Omiš into a path: steel cable, rungs and pegs lead across vertical slabs and ledges up to the Starigrad fortress, with the town, the mouth of the Cetina and the channel toward Brač under your heels the whole way. The route is of middling difficulty, passable for anyone free of vertigo who can work arms and legs for two to three hours; no technical climbing skill is needed, as you are clipped to the cable throughout with a ferrata set and two carabiners. It is done in guided tours that provide harness, helmet and instructions, setting out early in the morning or later in the afternoon, because the rock faces south and in summer heats like a stove. You need closed sports shoes, a litre and a half of water and gloves if you have them; the rest is in your head. The reward is double: the feel of the rock under your fingers where pirate lookouts once kept watch, and entering Fortica from its wild side, with a view ordinary visitors never see. The descent is by walking trail, and your knees will thank you for poles.

Canyoning on the Cetina begins where the trails end: in the upper canyon near Zadvarje, below the Gubavica falls, where the river forces its way through a bed you can only enter by jumping, swimming and roping down. In wetsuit and helmet you follow the guide downstream for three to four hours: sliding down chutes the water has polished for millennia, jumps of two to eight metres into green pools, each one optional, swims through narrows where the sky shrinks to a blue line, and at the end, in the harder variant, an abseil beside the waterfall itself. The basic tour asks only sound fitness and confident swimming, no climbing skills; every jump can be walked around. Even in summer the water sits around fifteen degrees, which is why the operators provide the suit, and you bring swimwear, sturdy shoes that may get wet and dry clothes for afterwards. Whoever has passed through this stretch of the Cetina never again looks at the river from a bridge but from within: as a living thing that carved the whole landscape around Omiš.

Mala Luka is the secret the people of Omiš share reluctantly: a tiny cove squeezed between Brzet and Nemira, reachable only on foot along the coastal path or from the sea. Twenty metres of pebbles, two or three rocks for jumping, pines leaning down to the waterline and sea that, thanks to depth and currents, stays glass-clear even at the peak of August. There are no facilities at all, no shower, no café, no sunbeds, and precisely for that reason it draws those who want the sea as it was before tourism: towel on a stone, mask in hand, book in the shade. The water deepens fast, so the cove suits swimmers better than families with toddlers; the rocks on the southern side hide the best snorkelling in the town's immediate surroundings. Come in the morning while the cove lies in shade, or late afternoon when the sun drops low; bring water, fruit and shoes for the rock, and carry your rubbish back, for there is no bin here. Fifteen minutes' walk from town, and the feeling of the world's end: that is Mala Luka.