A walled hill town above the Mirna valley, small enough that the walk round the ramparts is the whole sightseeing list. Below it lies the oak wood where some of the world's best white truffles grow.
Checked: 25 August 2026
Motovun stands on a hill in the middle of Istria with its medieval walls still complete around it, and the whole town fits inside them. That is the appeal and the warning: you can see it in an hour, and most people do. What makes it worth a day is what lies below, the Mirna valley and the oak wood that grows in it.
- 09:00Under the gate, and the winged lion
The old town gate carries a relief of the lion of Saint Mark, five centuries of Venetian rule in one carving. The walls around it are set with coats of arms and Roman stones, a small lapidarium you walk through rather than visit.
- 09:30The rampart walk, all the way round
The complete ring of medieval walls crowns the hill, and the walk takes twenty minutes. Below you the red roofs fall down the slope while the green Mirna valley opens on every side. Come early or late; the middle of the day flattens it.
- 10:30The square, and a printer from 1480
Motovun comes together on one small square between the church, the old loggia and a café terrace or two. It is named after Andrea Antico, born here around 1480, one of the first people in Europe to print polyphonic music.
- 11:30The north edge, and the sea of fog
From the northern wall the whole Mirna valley lies below: a patchwork of vineyards, fields and the dark line of the Motovun forest. On autumn mornings fog fills the valley and the town appears to stand on an island of light.
- 14:00Down into the truffle wood
On the valley floor the Motovun forest is a damp oak wood where some of the world's best white truffles hide among the roots. Join a local hunter and a sharp-nosed dog; the season runs from autumn into winter, and the fair at Livade is the shop window for all of it.
- 16:00The Parenzana, on an old railway bed
Steam trains once ran from Trieste to Poreč along here; the track bed is now a gentle gravel path that winds below the town, through cool stone tunnels and over old viaducts. Walk a stretch or hire a bike at the bottom.
Where next
- 03.10.The truffle fair in Livade
Five kilometres down the hill, every weekend from 3 October to 1 November, with a train into the forest and a real hunt at the end of it.
- 40 minPoreč and the gold mosaics
Where the Parenzana used to end: a sixth-century basilica whose mosaics have not moved in fifteen hundred years.
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