Rab. Things to do, map and hidden gems

The Great Bell Tower is the most celebrated silhouette of the island of Rab and by many counts the finest campanile on the Adriatic: 26 metres of Romanesque perfection from the 12th century, a free-standing tower rising from the narrowest point of the old town through four storeys of biforas and triforas, ever airier toward the top, until a pyramid and cross close it. The builders knew their craft: storey by storey the openings grow wider and lighter, so the tower seems to lift itself toward the sky. The climb up wooden stairs through the tower's inside is part of the experience, creak, half-dark and bells overhead, and the reward is a view no photograph carries honestly: Rab's four bell towers in a row, red roofs on a narrow tongue of land, Kalifront on one side and the Velebit on the other. In summer one climbs in short waves, for the top is small; patience pays. The tower stands beside the former cathedral at the town's most solemn end, so the ascent comes naturally as the crown of a walk along the Upper Street. The ticket is symbolic and the hours follow the season: check the board by the entrance.

Paradise Beach at Lopar is the reason half of Europe knows of Rab: a mile of true sand in a shallow bay, with sea that for hundreds of metres does not pass the knees, so in summer the bay is warm as a tub and safe as a paddling pool. On the Adriatic, where sand is the exception and shingle the rule, such a beach is a geological gift: the Lopar peninsula is built of sandstone, so all its bays, some twenty of them, are dusted with sand. Paradise is the largest and best equipped: loungers, showers, cafés, waterslides, sports courts and a lifeguard service make it a machine for family days, with everything ten steps away. The price of comfort is the crowd, the July and August beach can hold thousands; whoever seeks calm should take the sandy paths across the point to the neighbouring bays, where empty sand remains even at peak. The water warms faster than anywhere on the island and bathing lasts into October. From the Stinica-Misnjak ferry line one reaches Lopar in some twenty minutes' drive, from Rab town in fifteen.

Goli Otok is the hardest and most important story an outing from Rab can tell: a stone desert across the Barbat channel on which from 1949 worked a political prison camp for those condemned in Yugoslavia's clash with Stalin, later a prison, closed only in 1988. Thousands passed through the camp, and what they built stands to this day: workshops, dormitories, administration, a power plant and a cinema, now empty shells through which walk the bora and the odd sheep. Precisely that combination, blue bathing sea by the piers and the ghostly silence of the buildings, makes the visit an experience not forgotten. From Rab town and Lopar excursion boats run in summer, and smaller boats from Barbat cross the channel in a quarter-hour; on the island a tourist train rounds the main points, and one may also walk on one's own. Bring water, a hat and firm shoes, shade is nearly none, catering is reduced to one seasonal point. Walk the cells and workshops slowly and read the boards: this is no stage set but a memorial, a place that explains half a century of history better than textbooks.