Middle Street

Why it is worth your time

The Middle Street is the spine of Rab's old town: the middle of the three parallel streets running the length of the peninsula, the Upper by the churches, the Lower by the sea, and the Middle between them, the main trading and strolling vein since the Middle Ages. Here Rab reads best metre by metre: Renaissance portals with coats of arms, Gothic biforas above shop windows, courtyards showing outer staircases and vine pergolas through half-open doors, and the odd palace facade that has outlived the family whose name it carries. The ground floors are to this day what they always were, shops, taverns, galleries and ice-cream parlours, so the street lives from morning coffee to midnight stroll.

The summer crowd is part of the folklore: whoever wants the street to themselves should come before nine, when the stone is just waking and the shutters opening. The loveliest details are overhead, so walk slowly and look up. The Middle Street is not an address one visits but one walked ten times a day; precisely for that it is the most honest cross-section of the town there is.