Lokrum

Lokrum lies barely 600 metres off the Old Town, a low wooded island that reads as a green counterweight to the stone city facing it. The whole island is a prote…Lokrum lies barely 600 metres off the Old Town, a low wooded island that reads as a green counterweight to the stone city facing it. The whole island is a protected nature reserve: no one lives there, no one stays overnight, and the ferry from the Old Port makes the crossing in about fifteen minutes, running roughly every half hour through the season.

Benedictine monks held the island from the eleventh century, and their monastery ruins anchor its centre, later reworked by Habsburg archduke Maximilian, who added the gardens and peacocks whose descendants still patrol the paths. Local legend attaches a curse to removing the island from church hands, which guides retell with varying degrees of seriousness. Fort Royal, the small Napoleonic fort on the island's high point, gives a full panorama back across the water to the walls.

The practical day is simple: walk the shaded paths, swim from the rock platforms on the seaward side or in the small saltwater lake known as the Dead Sea, visit the cloister and the botanical plantings, and eat at the one restaurant or the snack bar by the landing. Take water, note the last ferry back, and expect the island to close down entirely outside the ferry season.