Sipan

Sipan is the largest of the Elafiti islands, the small archipelago strung out northwest of Dubrovnik, and at roughly 17 kilometres from the city it is close enough for a day trip but quiet enough that few people bother. The island covers 16.2 square kilometres, runs about 9 kilometres end to end and never gets much wider than two and a half. Fewer than 500 people live here, in two villages: Sipanska Luka at the northwestern end and Sudurad at the southeastern.

The Island and Its Neighbours

Lopud and Kolocep, the other two inhabited Elafiti, lie between Sipan and Dubrovnik and are easy additions to a longer cruise. The archipelago takes its name from the Greek elafos, deer, after the animals that were once numerous here. Sipan's own name is pronounced roughly 'she-pan'.

What visitors notice first is the olive. The island holds a Guinness World Record for the most olive trees relative to its size and population, with more than 300,000 of them covering the valley floor and the terraces above it.

History

The Croatian name Sipan is first documented in 1371. Latin and Italian records from the 13th century onwards call the island Juppana or Giuppana. Older writers sometimes identified it with Tauris, the island named in accounts of a naval action during Caesar's civil war in 47 BC, but that identification is contested and modern scholarship generally points to Scedro off Hvar or to the Pakleni Islands instead.

Sipan became part of the Republic of Ragusa in 1426, and the century that followed shaped almost everything you see today. Wealthy Ragusan families built summer houses here through the 15th and 16th centuries, and a surprising number of them survive. The island's own economy ran on shipbuilding, seafaring, olives, fishing and wine, and Sipan supplied crews and cargo capacity to the Republic's merchant fleet.

The decline came with the catastrophic earthquake of 1667, which levelled much of Dubrovnik and set off fires that finished what the shaking had started. The Republic never fully recovered, the shipbuilding trade fell away, and Sipan slipped to the margins. That neglect is partly why so much 16th-century stonework is still standing.

What to See

In Sudurad, the fortified residence and tower of the Stjepovic-Skocibuha family is the most substantial building on the island, put up by a shipowning dynasty who left their mark on the local architecture. At Pakljena, near Sipanska Luka, the Benedictine monastery complex and the church of St Mary include a fresco of St John the Baptist dated to before the 11th century, which makes it one of the oldest surviving paintings in the Dubrovnik area.

Sipansko Polje, the flat valley that connects the two villages, is the obvious walk or cycle: about four kilometres of level road between olive groves, with a track climbing to Velji Vrh at 243 metres for a view down the length of the Elafiti and across to the mainland.

Beaches and Anchorages

Velika Klacina, near Sudurad, is the most straightforward of the beaches, pebbly with a small cafe behind it. There is a naturist beach on the same stretch of coast. Prijezba, near Sipanska Luka, is rock rather than shingle, with clear deep water for swimming straight off the shelf.

Sipanska Luka is a long, narrow, well-protected inlet and the natural place to spend a night, which is why it is one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Dubrovnik. Sudurad's harbour is smaller and busier with the ferry, which runs from Dubrovnik in about an hour and a half. Both villages have moorings and a handful of restaurants, and neither has much in the way of shops, so provisioning is better done before you leave the mainland.

When to Go

Summers are hot and dry. Average daytime highs in July and August sit around 27 to 28 degrees Celsius, and the sea peaks near 26 degrees in August, which is warm enough that swimming is comfortable well into the evening. May, June, September and October are the better months for walking and cycling, with milder days and far fewer visitors, and the sea still swimmable through September. Bring proper footwear if you plan to go up to Velji Vrh; the tracks are stony.