Zadar

Zadar occupies a slender promontory on the northeastern edge of the Adriatic, its urban fabric tracing a thread through more than two millennia of Mediterranean history. Today, this Croatian city of roughly seventy thousand souls stands as the oldest continuously inhabited centre in the nation, a place where the stones themselves bear witness to Roman, Venetian, Austrian, Italian and Yugoslav eras. Its harbour, set against the islands of Ugljan and Pašman, still offers a sheltered entry from the sea, though the moat that once separated the headland from the mainland is long since filled. At a glance, narrow streets hint at medieval churches and fortress walls; beyond, Renaissance bastions peer down toward a modern port facility that connects the city to Europe’s shores by ferry and to the skies at an airport fourteen kilometres inland.

The contemporary contours of Zadar were first drawn under Roman rule, when Julius Caesar and Augustus fortified the settlement, carving out a forum, basilica and temple at its heart and laying aqueducts to supply fresh water. Vestiges of those constructions endure. Two expansive squares remain embellished with marble columns, while beyond the ramparts a fragmentary aqueduct recalls the ambitions of Rome’s engineers. Where amphitheatres and cemeteries once lay, the medieval town took shape, its churches and monastic houses gradually enclosing the ancient footprint.

From the Middle Ages onward, Zadar’s silhouette persisted with little alteration. Venetian rulers in the early sixteenth century reinforced its defences with new walls, bastions and trenches. Though these trenches—known locally as the Foša—were buried under Italian occupation, the Austrian administration of the later nineteenth century converted the landward ramparts into promenades, offering broad promenades and commanding views of both sea and mainland. Of the city’s four original gates, the Porta Marina incorporates fragments of a Roman arch, while the Porta di Terraferma bears the signature of Michele Sanmicheli, the Veronese architect whose design endures above the ornate portal.

Scarred by the bombardments of World War II, Zadar nonetheless retains an extraordinary concentration of landmarks. Its Roman Forum remains the region’s largest, founded under Augustus and marked by inscriptions from the third century. Nearby, the Church of St. Donatus—a massive ninth-century rotunda—stands as the most significant pre-Romanesque building in Dalmatia. Its broad dome and two-tiered gallery frame three eastern apses, and its interior holds the pastoral staff of Bishop Valaresso, crafted in 1460. In the cathedral precinct, St. Anastasia’s Basilica rises in high Romanesque form: twin bell towers straddle an austere nave built across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Elsewhere, Romanesque simplicity yields to Gothic and later styles. The Church of St. Francis, where the peace treaty of 1358 was signed, shelters choir stalls carved in 1394 by Giovanni di Giacomo da Borgo San Sepolcro. In Five Wells Square, the mingled shadows of water distribution echo another era of communal life. A nineteenth-century Land Gate and the fifteenth-century Citadel still frame the entry to the old town, while the Great Arsenal and the loggia—rebuilt in 1565—speak to Zadar’s maritime and civic ambitions. Beyond them, the episcopal palace and the former palace of the priors hint at the enduring role of Church and state. And, most recently, gentle currents of Adriatic swell over the steps of a modern sea organ, a testament to the city’s ongoing dialogue between antiquity and innovation.

Climate in Zadar is shaped by its coastal position at the frontier of Mediterranean and humid subtropical influences. Winters are mild and moist, with average January temperatures around 7.7 °C; severe cold spells are rare, though records register lows of –12 °C at the Zemunik station in February 2018. Summer months bring sustained heat and humidity, with July and August highs averaging 29–30 °C. On the hottest day registered—5 August 2017—the thermometer climbed to 40 °C at the modern station, while the older urban gauge peaked at 39 °C on 6 August 2022. Rain may fall at any time of year, but autumn and spring carry the greatest weight: October and November each deliver some 115 mm of precipitation, while July remains the driest with around 35 mm. Snow is almost unheard of on the narrow city streets, appearing perhaps once in every winter, yet the sea itself follows a steady seasonal rhythm—from 10 °C in February to as warm as 25 °C in midsummer, and occasionally rising to 29 °C.

The population of Zadar proper occupies 25 km² of peninsula and hills beyond. In 2011, slightly more than seventy-five thousand people resided within the city, making it the second-largest centre in Dalmatia and fifth in Croatia. A decade later, the 2021 census counted 70,779 inhabitants, of whom nearly 95 per cent identified as ethnic Croats and roughly 2 per cent as Serbs. A once-vibrant community of Dalmatian Italians, numbering over nine thousand around 1910, dwindled during and after World War II, leaving fewer than a hundred residents today.

Those figures trace the arc of Zadar’s political and cultural affiliations. For centuries the city formed the capital of Venetian Dalmatia, its streets speaking both Italianate refinement and Slavic tradition. In the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, it fostered painters, sculptors and architects—among them Giorgio da Sebenico and Francesco Laurana—and became a focal point for Croatian literary endeavour. Petar Zoranić wrote Planine, the nation’s first novel, and Jerolim Vidolić, Brne Karnarutić and Juraj Baraković added to a corpus of vernacular narrative. Under French rule from 1806 to 1810, Zadar’s press issued Il Regio Dalmata, a bilingual newspaper printed in Italian and Croatian—the latter’s first appearance in a periodical form. National revivals in the later nineteenth century further cemented the city’s dual heritage.

Cultural life remains vigorous. The Croatian Theatre House occupies a neoclassical hall at the city’s edge. The National Museum and the Archaeological Museum—established in 1830—display artefacts from prehistory to the Renaissance, while the Museum of Ancient Glass traces local cutting and blowing techniques. A permanent exhibition of sacral art, “The Gold and Silver of Zadar,” reveals ecclesiastical metalwork and reliquaries within the walls of a former church. Music endures as well: the Croatian Singing Musical Society Zoranić, founded in 1885, continues its choral tradition, and each summer the calm resonances of “Musical Evenings in St. Donatus,” begun in 1961, mingle with the Adriatic breeze. Since 1997, an international choir competition has brought voices from abroad to sing beneath Zadar’s medieval arches.

Academic life, interrupted in 1807, revived in 2002 with the refounding of the University of Zadar, whose medieval precursor dated to 1396. Its libraries uphold the civic archive, while faculties draw on the city’s role as an educational, industrial and transport hub for northern Dalmatia. Administratively, Zadar serves as the seat of its county and of the wider region, a centre of commerce and governance.

Transport links reflect the city’s role as both terminus and thoroughfare. The Adriatic coastal highway threads through Zadar, connecting Split to the south with Rijeka and Zagreb via inland routes; two interchanges—Zadar 1 and Zadar 2—grant access to the urban network, while the expressway D424 leads to Gaženica port. On land, buses provide the sole public service, with inter-city coaches at the main station and suburban routes run by the Liburnija company. The railway, once linking Zadar to Knin and beyond, ceased passenger operations by 2020, making it one of Europe’s largest cities without a direct train connection. From the sea, car ferries sail daily to Ancona in Italy, and local catamarans and ferries serve the islands of the archipelago. At Zemunik airport, low-cost carriers expand summer schedules, driving an average annual traffic increase of roughly 30 per cent.

Yet tourism remains at the heart of Zadar’s modern life. Visitors are drawn not only by its layered heritage but by the city’s capacity to accommodate them. Gaženica port offers roll-on, roll-off berths for private yachts; the old town unfolds in serpentine alleys where cafes press against church walls; contemporary sculptures, films and exhibitions animate public squares. British newspapers have noted this vitality—The Times called Zadar “the entertainment centre of the Adriatic,” while The Guardian christened it “Croatia’s new capital of cool” in 2017—yet such epithets only hint at the city’s true nature. In dawn light, the seawall steps that host the organ’s haunting tones appear timeless. By sunset, the tinkling harmonies mingle with gull cries, and visitors pause to catch the passing light on centuries of stone.

In such moments, Zadar reveals itself not as a static museum but as a place where history, climate and culture remain in constant conversation. Each church doorway, every stretch of wall, attests to survival under shifting sovereignties. Its citizens trace familiar routes from harbour to square, from promontory park to elevated rampart, carrying forward the rhythms of daily life in a city shaped by empire and by sea. Here, on Croatia’s oldest stage, the unbroken thread of human habitation persists, not as an artifact but as an ongoing story—one in which the present day becomes, in its own time, the past to be reimagined by those who follow.