Poreč. Things to do, map and hidden gems

The Euphrasian Basilica was raised in the middle of the 6th century, in the time of Bishop Euphrasius, on the site of older Christian buildings, and since 1997 it has been on the UNESCO world heritage list as the most complete surviving early Byzantine sacral complex in the Mediterranean. In the apse is a mosaic with the Virgin and Child enthroned, and to the left Euphrasius himself is shown holding a model of the church, the oldest such depiction of a donor in this part of Europe. The mosaics are worked in glass paste and gold leaf, so their gleam changes with the time of day. Beside the basilica are the atrium, an octagonal baptistery, the bishop's palace with a lapidarium and a bell tower climbed by narrow steps. The ticket covers the whole complex; visit in the morning, when the light in the apse is best.

The Heritage Museum of the Porec Region was founded in 1884 and is the oldest museum in Istria. It is housed in the Baroque Sincic palace in the old core, an 18th-century building with a courtyard and a staircase that are themselves part of the display. The collection covers the whole area: ancient inscriptions and stone fragments from Roman Parentium, medieval objects, church vessels, weapons, furniture and portraits of Porec families, and ethnographic material from the surrounding villages. Alongside it is kept documentation on the Istrian assembly, which in the second half of the 19th century sat precisely in Porec. The display is arranged chronologically, the visit takes an hour, and the ticket is cheap. The museum works all year, with extended hours in season; it stands along the Decumanus.

The House of Two Saints stands in a row of old buildings in the core of Porec and takes its name from two stone reliefs of saints set into the facade. Such depictions were placed on houses in Istrian towns for several reasons: as protection for the household, as the sign of a confraternity to which the family belonged, or as a vow after surviving illness; the plague passed through these towns in waves, and patron saints were part of the everyday equipment of life. The building is medieval, with later alterations, and its narrow facade and tall windows are characteristic of the whole street. The house is in private use and is viewed from outside. It stands a few steps from the Decumanus, so it is easiest to fit it into a walk through the core.

Vrsar is a small town on a hill by the sea, fifteen kilometres south of Porec, built in concentric rings around the summit on which the castle and the parish church stand. For centuries the settlement belonged to the bishops of Porec, who had a summer residence here in a fortified castle; below it are narrow streets, stone houses and a town gate. At the edge of the settlement stands the Romanesque church of St Mary of the Sea of the 12th century, one of the oldest in Istria. Vrsar is mentioned in the writings of Giacomo Casanova, who put in here in the middle of the 18th century. Not far off is the abandoned Montraker quarry, today the site of a sculpture school, and to the south the Lim channel opens. The climb to the top through narrow streets takes some ten minutes; the view reaches the islets off the coast.

Tar is a village on a rise a few kilometres from the coast, north of Porec, and belongs to that series of Istrian settlements built away from the sea because of pirates. The core is small, with stone houses along one main street, a parish church and a square where events are held in summer. The area is known for olives: on the red earth around Tar grow trees several centuries old, and oil from this part of Istria regularly enters international guides as among the best in the world. In the village and around it several family mills work that receive visitors for tasting, by arrangement. The coast and Lanterna are five kilometres away, Porec ten; a cycle route toward Novigrad also passes through Tar.

The Decumanus is the main longitudinal axis of the old core of Porec and runs straight through the peninsula from east to west, from the Pentagonal Tower to the Marafor. The Romans founded Parentium as a colony in the 1st century BC and laid out the town on a regular grid: the decumanus was the main street running east to west, and the cardo maximus the perpendicular axis to the north; both existed and all the other streets were parallel to them. What makes Porec unusual is that this grid was never lost: the present street plan of the old core is almost the same as it was two thousand years ago. Along the Decumanus stand Romanesque and Gothic houses, shops and cafes. The street is paved with stone, is pedestrian and is walked in ten minutes.

The observatory at Visnjan was founded in 1976 in the Istrian hinterland, on a hill above the village, and in the 1990s it became one of the most productive small observatories in the world: more than a thousand asteroids were discovered from it, an exceptional result for the equipment and means it had. When the lighting of the surrounding settlements grew too bright for precise measurement, the observing was moved to a darker site nearby. Today the observatory works in education: hundreds of secondary school students from across Europe have passed through its summer schools, and some have gone on to careers in science. For visitors, evening observing sessions and lectures are organised by arrangement. Visnjan is a twenty-minute drive from Porec.

Novigrad lies on a small peninsula some twenty kilometres north of Porec and is one of those Istrian towns that spent their whole history facing the sea. The core is girded by the remains of medieval walls with towers, and within it are the parish church of St Pelagius with a Romanesque crypt of the 11th century, one of the oldest on this coast, and a lapidarium with Roman and early medieval stone fragments displayed in a modern pavilion. Novigrad is known too for its fish cooking, especially shellfish and langoustines from the northern Adriatic. A promenade runs along the shore around the whole peninsula, and fishing boats lie in the harbour. The drive from Porec takes some twenty minutes; count on half a day for a visit with lunch.

Saladinka is a cove on the shore north of Porec, between the settlements of Materada and Cervar, and belongs to that part of the coast where the tourist zone thins out. The shore is low and rocky, with belts of coarser shingle between flat slabs, and the sea is deeper at once than at the town bathing places and very clear, because there is no sand to cloud it. The cove faces west and is open, so here you watch the sunset straight into the open, and the bora blowing off the land raises no swell. There are few facilities: the odd bench, a path through the pines and shade; bring food, water and a parasol. Saladinka is reached by bicycle or car in some ten minutes from Porec, and the coastal path links the cove with the neighbouring bathing places.

The island of St Nicholas lies opposite the Porec harbour, ten minutes' sailing from the waterfront, and from it the old core is seen whole, with the basilica's bell tower and the towers. The island is green and covered over its whole extent by pinewood that gives shade to the very edge of the shore; the shore is rocky and arranged with concrete platforms and ladders, and in a few places there are shingle coves. It bears the name of the medieval Benedictine monastery that once stood here. At the northern end of the island stands a lighthouse, and in the middle a hotel complex; the rest is publicly accessible. Boats run every half hour in season, and the ticket is cheap and valid both ways. For a day at sea without a car this is the best choice in Porec.

The Baredine cave lies inland, some ten kilometres north-east of Porec, and is one of the few Istrian caves developed for visitors. It is a vertical shaft about a hundred and thirty metres deep, of which five halls to a depth of some sixty metres are laid out for the tour; you descend by steps with a guide. Inside are flowstone, stalactites and calcite curtains, and in a small lake at the bottom lives the olm, a blind amphibian that dwells only in the underground waters of the Dinaric karst and can survive for years without food. The temperature is a steady fourteen degrees, so take a jacket and footwear with a good sole. The tour lasts some forty minutes and is led in groups. The cave works from spring to autumn, and at the height of the season it is better to come in the morning.

The Porec waterfront runs along the southern edge of the peninsula, from the harbour toward the Pentagonal Tower, and is the busiest part of town: people walk here, excursion boats dock, and the cafes are occupied all day. Palms are planted along the shore, and on the other side a row of buildings shows the layers of Porec history, from medieval houses to Austrian structures of the 19th century, when the town was the seat of the Istrian assembly. From the waterfront small boats leave for the island of St Nicholas, ten minutes away, and in season they run every half hour. The walk from one end to the other takes some fifteen minutes. The best moment is toward evening, when the sun sets directly behind the island and the stone of the core takes on a warm colour.