Goli Otok

Why it is worth your time

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.