Zaklopatica Bay

Zaklopatica Bay sits close to Lastovo Town — the two are only a couple of kilometres apart — and it has become one of the island's better-known anchorages for a fairly simple reason: the food. Beyond that, it is a narrow, deeply cut inlet on the northern coast of the most remote permanently inhabited island in Croatia, screened from open water by a low islet of the same name and looking north across the channel towards Korčula.

The Bay and Its Anchorage

Zaklopatica lies roughly 2 km from Lastovo Town and about 7 km from Ubli, the island's ferry port on the south-west coast, the three linked by asphalt road and a local bus. The islet at the mouth divides the entrance into two channels, and sailing guides consistently send visiting boats through the eastern one, since the western approach is shallow. The seabed is mostly rock, as in most Lastovo bays, so anchors need setting with care; when the bora pushes down from the north-east, crews commonly tuck in behind the islet for extra cover. That same islet is a nesting site for the Yelkouan shearwater, a scarce Mediterranean seabird known on Lastovo as the kaukala.

Zaklopatica is popular with divers thanks to clear water and a rocky seabed, and it is sheltered enough to be a comfortable overnight stop for sailors passing through the Lastovo archipelago. Ashore, a single row of houses and villas rings the shoreline — around 16 family-run apartments and guest houses, most of them directly on the water. There is no beach in the bay, but Korita, a pebble cove 1 km away, is reachable on foot or by dinghy.

Eating Ashore: Triton and Augusta Insula

Restaurant Triton, founded in 1988 by Tonči Jurica and now run by his son Ljubo, is the main draw. It sources fish, lobster and scampi straight from the water and vegetables from the family's own land, and offers free mooring with electricity on request for anyone eating there — though it is worth booking ahead in season, since the terrace, with its sunset views over the bay, fills up fast. Konoba Augusta Insula, a family-run restaurant and apartment business going on 30 years, is the other longstanding option in the bay. Its name is a nod to the Romans, who thought enough of the island's fertility to call it Augusta Insula, the Imperial Island.

An Island That Stayed Off the Map

Lastovo first appears in writing as Ladesta, recorded by the sixth-century lexicographer Stephanus of Byzantium, who cited the fourth-century BC Greek historian Theopompus as his source. The island joined the Republic of Ragusa in 1252 on terms that preserved its internal autonomy, and in 1310 it received the Statute of Lastovo, its first written body of law. It passed through French, British and Austrian hands between 1806 and 1815. Italy governed it between 1918 and 1943, after which it became Yugoslav — and, crucially for how it looks today, a closed military zone until 1988. Outside visitors were effectively barred for four decades, which is why Lastovo has almost none of the coastal development you find on Hvar or Korčula.

Pirate raids explain the island's odd settlement pattern: Lastovo Town sits inland on a hillside rather than on the water, deliberately out of sight of the sea. Its houses are topped by fumari, the ornate cylindrical chimneys of the 15th and 16th centuries that doubled as status symbols — no two in the village are alike. The island's carnival, Poklad, held on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, ends with a straw effigy hauled up the village on a rope, sent sliding back down, then beheaded and burned.

A Nature Park With Some of Europe's Darkest Skies

The Croatian Parliament declared the Lastovo archipelago a nature park on 29 September 2006, making it the country's eleventh. The park covers close to 200 km² — roughly 53 km² of land and 143 km² of sea — and takes in 46 islands, islets, rocks and reefs, of which Lastovo itself (46.87 km², high point Hum at 415 m) and Sušac are the largest. Fewer than 800 people live in the whole municipality. With almost no light pollution, Lastovo trades on the nickname "island of stars": the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye on clear nights, and the park has been pursuing formal Dark Sky Park recognition.

When to Go and How to Reach It

The season runs from roughly April to November, with July and August the warmest and busiest months. Almost everything reaches the island through Ubli, where the ferry line keeps its ticket office, and a road connects the port with Lastovo Town and down to Zaklopatica. One note for anyone working from older guidebooks: Croatia adopted the euro on 1 January 2023, so the kuna advice still circulating online is out of date. Zaklopatica is a quieter alternative to the busier anchorages further north, and best reached during a Dubrovnik gulet cruise that takes in Lastovo as part of a longer island-hopping route.