Ravni. Things to do, map and hidden gems

Ravni belongs to the municipality of Raša and counted 64 residents in the 2021 census, one of the smallest places on this site. It began as a summer hamlet: families from Labin and Raša kept fishing huts and gardens here, and the permanent settlement only grew with tourism from the 1970s. Today it is houses with apartments on two or three terraces above the beach, one grocery, a few konobas and a road that ends at the car park. There is no centre in the usual sense, no church, no square; the place is the shore and the view. Anyone after evening life drives to Rabac or Labin; anyone after quiet is in the right spot. Pharmacy, doctor and post office are in Labin, fourteen kilometres by road, the cash machine in neighbouring Sveta Marina.

Skitača sits four kilometres south-west of Ravni on a 425-metre plateau ringed by four hills: Goli, Oštri, Brdo and Orlić. The village was founded in the fifteenth century by refugees from the Turks, and its name, probably of Vlach origin, means people who move, wanderers. Only a few families live there now, the stone houses stand scattered across the plateau, and in the middle is the church of St Lucy, built in 1616, with a plain front and a bell gable. Around the church runs the St Lucy trail, a three-kilometre educational path with boards on the karst, the plants and the legend of the saint who wept here until the villagers built her a church. On her feast day, 13 December, people from the whole Labin area come for mass and the blessing of the water. In summer Skitača is the coolest place around: two hundred metres above the coast, always with a breeze, with the Kvarner showing between the hills. The road from Ravni is narrow and paved, ten minutes' drive.

Labin is the town Ravni relies on: the seat of the neighbouring municipality, the pharmacy, the doctor, the market and the nearest place with real evening life. The old town on its 320-metre hill keeps its Venetian walls, a town gate with the lion, the baroque palaces Battiala-Lazzarini and Franković and a narrow main square with a sixteenth-century loggia. Coal was mined under the town for centuries; the National Museum in the Battiala-Lazzarini palace has a replica mine gallery you walk through. Today Labin is a town of artists, with studios and galleries in the old houses, and in summer the square hosts Labin Art Republika with concerts and open studios. The drive from Ravni takes fifteen minutes, the car park is below the old town, from there it is uphill on foot. The Fortica viewpoint at the top looks over Rabac, Cres and Učka.

Orlić is the highest of the four hills around Skitača and the easiest to reach: a marked path leads from the church of St Lucy to the top, about twenty minutes up over rocky ground and through low woodland. At the summit there is a stone cairn, a wooden cross and the view that explains why people come. To the north rises Učka with the tower on Vojak, below it Opatija and Rijeka; to the east the whole of Cres with the Osorščica ridge, Krk behind; to the south Lošinj and, on clear days, Unije and Susak. Ravni and Sveta Marina lie below like a model. The best light is late afternoon, when the sun comes from the west behind you and lights the islands; the sunset itself is hidden by Brdo. In winter, after the bura, visibility is greatest. There is no shade and no water, bring both.

Ravni beach is the reason a village of some sixty residents has ten times as many people in summer. The shore drops in a long, gentle arc below the houses: fine pebbles in the middle, concrete terraces with ladders at either end, pines behind and a handful of konobas open from May to October. The entry is gradual, which makes it good for children, and the water is as clear as everywhere on Istria's east coast, where no rivers cloud it. The view runs straight across the Kvarner: Cres with the Osorščica ridge lies opposite, and on clear days Lošinj shows to the left. The southern stretch is set aside for dogs, a rarity on this coast. Morning is the best time, as the sun comes off the sea and the beach is warm by noon; in the afternoon the rocks above the village shade the northern end. Parking is by the road above; steps take you down to the water in three minutes.

Sveta Marina is the first larger place north of Ravni: a deep cove with a breakwater, some thirty berths for small boats, a campsite on the pine slope and a pebble-and-rock beach that runs out to the point. It takes its name from the chapel of St Marina above the harbour. For Ravni it is the service village: the cash machine, a diving centre, kayak and paddleboard hire and the only fuel station for boats on this stretch of coast are here. The drive from Ravni takes five minutes, and the coastal path gets you there on foot in about forty, past several small coves you can climb down to. The restaurant in the harbour runs all season and is one of the few around with fish from its own nets.

Koromačno is the last place on the road south, seven kilometres from Ravni, and unlike anything around it: the settlement was built in the 1920s for the workers of the cement plant that still runs on the point, with a chimney visible from half the Kvarner. Behind the plant and below the houses, in a cove facing south, the beach is white pebble with pines to the water and a sea that warms faster in this shelter than at Ravni. Tourists are few, the swimmers mostly local, and one café and a shop stay open all year. It is worth coming for the contrast and the quiet, and for anyone interested in industrial heritage the plant is one of the oldest of its kind in Croatia. The road goes no further; the peninsula ends at Cape Crna punta with its lighthouse.

Rabac is everything Ravni is not: multi-storey hotels, a promenade with cafés, excursion boats in the harbour and beaches with sunbeds and showers. Once a fishing village below Labin, since the 1960s it has been the largest resort of eastern Istria, with Girandella and Maslinica as its main beaches, both pebble, with gradual entry and a blue flag. From Ravni it is eighteen kilometres by road, because the coast cannot be followed, and you drive via Labin; in summer a bus comes down from Labin every half hour. You come here for what Ravni lacks: an evening by the sea with a choice of restaurants, a boat to Cres or along the coast, a market and a cash machine on every corner. In the afternoon you go back to the quiet, which in the end is why people choose Ravni.