Zadar – the musical capital of Croatia?

Zadar is one of the oldest cities in the region with the site being founded as a settlement in the 9th Century BC. Throughout the later years, it bounced around between the usual suspects in the area, including Italy, France, Austria and was handed to Italy after the first world war. After the Second World War, it became a part of Yugoslavia but after the war of Croatian Independence between 1991 and 1995 it was finally reunited with Croatia. But why the musical capital? Just my way of noting that there is a remarkable sea organ built alongside the waterfront with pipes underwater to create notes and sounds as the waves lap backwards and forwards over the steps as you will see in an upcoming photograph!

We arrived on our Empires of the Mediterranean cruise early in the morning from Dubrovnik through almost calm waters:

This is a port where the ship docks right by the old town and as we were coming in, the steps that form that sea organ come into view:

The old town is immediately visible from the ship as we docked:

We chose to take a tour into Croatia that was destined for Novigrad, but first we stopped at a small farmhouse in the village of Nadin to have some local cuisine. I was intrigued by the rough stonework and interesting decorations and so my photographic eye wandered a little!

But to be honest, Novigrad turned out to be the highlight of the day. We first stopped at an overlook to see the entire city with its ancient castle on the hilltop and I was immediately attracted to the old buildings with the gentle curves of the harbor. There are several Novigrads in Croatia, but this is the one in Zadar county and has a Venetian Fort above the town itself:

You get a better view of the castle in this view of the old houses in the town:

The coach dropped us by the town hall and the blue water in the harbor was an immediate attraction for me:

There was a walking tour around the town which ended up with a local musical recital, but me being me, took the option of a climb to the fortress instead. We had our time to be back on the coach and I thought there was plenty of time – but only a few people took this choice. And no wonder – it was quite a climb to the top starting with these steps from the waterfront:

Unlike many castles where the public is carefully kept away from open falls, this was just a set of ruins, but exciting in its own way. You wouldn’t see many unprotected wells when visiting ancient places in the UK for instance:

From the top, you could see the coast and the Novigrad Bay which leads to the Adriatic:

And as usual, I was on the minutes with my return to the coach – I had been taking a last chance to photograph some of the boats in the harbor, but it is not much of an excuse!

Back in the town of Zadar, we had more treats in store. There are many different styles of architecture in the town, from Roman through Venetian and into later centuries. We strolled the town looking at the ruins of what I think was a Roman forum and then visited some of the churches and monasteries:

There was a very unusual round church (now more of a museum) where you can climb higher to get a view down into what was the main area of the church:

And look up at the complex roof structure from below:

The Franciscan Monastery provided a calm and restful place to just relax and take in the old building:

But all too soon it was time to stroll back to the ship and say goodbye to Zadar.

The day wasn’t over though. As we sailed on towards our next port of call at Koper in Slovenia, we were treated to a magnificent double rainbow over the ocean and framing our journey:

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