Brijuni National Park

Brijuni is an archipelago of fourteen islands off Fazana, and in practice only Veli Brijun is open to ordinary visitors. It stayed closed to the public for most of the twentieth century, which is why there are no resorts, no villages and no cars beyond a small tourist train. What is there instead is a strange layered parkland: holm oak and laurel grazed short by deer, a Roman villa on Verige Bay, the outline of a Byzantine fort, and Cretaceous dinosaur footprints in the coastal limestone. An old olive tree near the harbour is dated by the park to roughly sixteen hundred years. Visits run entirely on the park's timetable - boat across, train circuit, a walk, boat back.

History

The ancient Greeks called the islands Pollariae; there were Roman settlements on them, but until the late 19th century the Brijuni were mainly quarries, worked for centuries. They belonged to Venice from the Middle Ages, and their stone went into the palaces and bridges of that city; after a short spell in Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces they passed to Austria in 1815, and their quarries then supplied stone to Vienna and Berlin. Once the navy settled in Pula, the Austrians built Fort Tegetthoff on Veli Brijun. In 1893 the Viennese industrialist Paul Kupelwieser bought the whole archipelago to make a resort; he invited Robert Koch to try his malaria experiments here in 1900, and in 1901 the islands were declared free of malaria. A harbour, parks, vineyards, a dairy, hotels and a heated seawater bath followed, the islands became a meeting place of Viennese society, painted about 150 times by Hugo Charlemont, and in 1922 they gained what is described as the first 18-hole golf course in Europe (Wikipedia, Brijuni).

Highlights

• The Verige Bay villa - foundations of a large Roman seaside residence spread along the shoreline of a sheltered inlet.
• Dinosaur footprints - Cretaceous tracks pressed into flat coastal limestone, marked at several points on Veli Brijun.
• The safari enclosure - a fenced area with zebras, antelope and other animals that arrived as diplomatic gifts decades ago.
• The parkland itself - open lawns, deer, peacocks and old cedars, with no buildings interrupting the view of the sea.

When to go

Boats run most of the year but the full programme is May to October. Morning departures are cooler and the light on the water is better. Book the crossing in advance in July and August, when sailings sell out a day ahead. Off season the island is quiet but some sites and the train service are reduced.

Things to know

You are on a fixed schedule from the moment you buy the ticket, and the train circuit is fast, narrated and hard to escape if you prefer to walk. The combined ticket is not cheap for what is essentially a park visit. The safari animals are few and elderly. There is little shade on the open lawns at midday.

Nearby

Pula and its Roman arena are half an hour away, and the fishing town of Fazana is the departure point.

Key facts