Prvić Luka and Faust Vrančić

Why it is worth your time

Prvić Luka is the smaller of the two villages on the island of Prvić, and the whole island has not a single car. Boats from Vodice call several times a day and the crossing takes about twenty minutes, which makes this the easiest island trip on this stretch of coast: no ferry, no booking, just a ticket at the landing.

In the church of Our Lady of Mercy lies Faust Vrančić, the 16th-century polymath from Šibenik. His book Machinae Novae of 1615 shows some fifty machines, among them a man descending from a tower on cloth stretched over a frame: that drawing, called Homo Volans, is one of the earliest depictions of a parachute.

Vrančić was also a bishop and secretary to Emperor Rudolf II, and the dictionary he compiled is among the first for Croatian.

The village takes half an hour to see: the landing, the church, a handful of konobas and a narrow path that crosses the hill to Šepurine. A memorial centre devoted to Vrančić shows models of his machines and is the only real museum on the island.