Croatia

Croatia runs along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, from the Istrian peninsula in the north to Dubrovnik near the border with Montenegro. More than a thousand islands lie off its coast, and the Dalmatian shore between Split and Dubrovnik holds most of the country’s famous stone towns, with Roman, Venetian, and Ragusan architecture stacked along the water. The capital Zagreb sits inland; the coast is where my camera spent its time.

Dubrovnik

People call Dubrovnik the Pearl of the Adriatic, and the walled Old Town explains the name within minutes of walking in. The city and its walls have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979. Construction of the fortifications reaches back to the 8th century, though the circuit standing today was completed by the end of the 17th, and the old stones did their job one last time during the siege of 1991 to 1992.

The wall walk is where the city arranges itself. The walls lie around the Old Town as tightly as a belt, and from one of the round bastions I photographed the view across the cove to Fort Lovrijenac, the fortress on its cliff with the Croatian flag flying, the red roofs glowing behind the parapet.

The Stradun

This picture was taken at exactly 4:58 in the morning. Rising before the sun is standard procedure for me, and usually I have the world to myself at that hour. Not in Dubrovnik. Even before five in summer, the first tourists were already moving through the gates, many of them straight off the cruise ships that stop in the harbour.

The frame I waited for was the empty one: the Stradun before sunrise, the limestone pavement polished by centuries of feet and reflecting the lanterns like wet glass, the bell tower closing the view at the far end. The street fills by mid-morning and stays full until midnight. The five o’clock version is the one I keep.

Rector’s Palace

The Rector’s Palace has an eventful story to tell. The defensive building that stood here burnt to the ground in 1435, and the replacement fell victim to explosions and an earthquake before it was finally completed. The city’s Senate met in the building in the 16th century, and since 1872 it has housed a museum of Dubrovnik’s history.

Daria fell in love with the facade, which unites Gothic window tracery, Renaissance arcades, and Baroque details in one front. I used the deserted streets of the early morning to photograph the palace resting on the shining pavement, the way it might have looked in its Senate days, before the first tour group of the morning arrived.

Dubrovnik Cathedral and the Church of St Blaise

The best reason to walk the full circuit of the walls is the skyline. From the high sections, the cathedral dome and the church of St Blaise rise together above the red roofs, with the open Adriatic behind them and a single sailboat usually somewhere on the horizon.

The cathedral was built between 1672 and 1713, after the earthquake of 1667 had levelled its predecessor, and it remains the seat of the Diocese of Dubrovnik. The church of St Blaise honours the city’s patron saint and was built in 1715 on the site of an older church destroyed by fire. Those domes and towers against the turquoise of the sea are a combination I have not found anywhere else.

Split

Split is Croatia’s second-largest city and the unofficial capital of Dalmatia, founded as a Greek settlement in the 3rd or 2nd century BC. The waterfront is the city’s meeting place: I photographed the Riva and the bell tower of Saint Domnius at dusk from across the water, the promenade lit up under the mountains while the last colour drained from the sky.

The harbour is also the gateway to the islands. Jadrolinija ferries leave from here for Brač, Hvar, and the rest of the archipelago, with longer routes crossing to the Italian coast. I cover the city in full in my Split travel guide; it earns the pages.

Diocletian’s Palace

Emperor Diocletian, tired of ruling, had his retirement palace built on the bay of Split by 305 AD. Almost 30,000 square metres of marble and limestone, with a basement system that has survived seventeen centuries. The complex is not a fenced ruin; it is the living centre of the old town, with shops and apartments built into the Roman walls.

I photographed the Peristyle at four in the morning, when the floodlit columns had the square to themselves under a clear night sky. Every May the palace cellars host a wine tasting, which is how Daria and I ended up sampling Croatian wines in a 4th-century basement. On another evening the palace was too crowded to work in, so we followed the small white-stone streets instead and waited out the tour groups at a well-lit gate in the palace wall, until the moment between visitors finally came.

Split Harbour

At 5am I sat at the port in front of the gates of the city and waited for the sun. When it finally rose over the distant hills and reached the bell tower of the Cathedral of Saint Domnius, I was so taken by the moment that I almost forgot to press the shutter. The result is the fishing boats in the first light, the whole harbour turned orange around them.

The working boats are the point of this frame. Split’s harbour still runs at dawn, and the small boats moored along the Riva put a human scale in front of the palace city behind them.

Trogir

Trogir sits half an hour up the coast from Split, an ancient town on its own small island, connected to the mainland by a bridge. Greek colonists founded it in the 3rd century BC, and Romans, Byzantines, Hungarians, Venetians, Habsburgs, and the French all ruled it in turn, each leaving a mark. The Venetian centuries from 1420 shaped the centre you see today, and that preserved core was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997.

From the tower above the rooftops I photographed the old town with the channel and the mountains behind it, a yellow firefighting seaplane crossing the frame as it worked the coast. In the evening the life moves to the waterfront: the palm-lined promenade at blue hour is where the town eats, under the bell tower of St Dominic’s monastery.

Photographing Croatia

My Croatian archive has a pattern: almost nothing in it was taken in daylight. The Stradun at 4:58. The Peristyle at 4:00. The Split harbour at 5:00. The palaces and gates at blue hour, after the day crowds had gone to dinner.

That is the honest answer to photographing the Dalmatian coast in summer. The towns are full from mid-morning until midnight, and the stone that makes them famous only shows its texture when the streets are empty and the floodlights are on. The alarm clock does the work the camera gets credit for. A summer sunrise on this coast comes early, and the window before the first cruise passengers arrive is short; it was worth every one of those mornings.

When to Visit Croatia

Our trip was a summer one, and summer delivers what the coast promises: warm evenings on the promenades, ferries running full schedules, swimming off the rocks. It also delivers the crowds, and in Dubrovnik the cruise traffic decides the rhythm of the whole Old Town.

May, June, and September keep the warmth and lose a share of the visitors. Winter strips the coast back to its residents; many island connections thin out, but the stone towns photograph well in low sun and empty streets. Whatever the month, the hours around sunrise remain the difference between photographing Croatia and photographing other people’s holidays.

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