Vinogradisce Bay

Vinogradišće is the long, narrow inlet on the southern side of Sveti Klement, the largest of the Pakleni Islands lying immediately off Hvar Town. Almost nobody calls it by that name. To sailors and day-trippers alike it is simply Palmižana, even though Palmižana is strictly the settlement and marina on the opposite, northern shore, a few minutes' walk across the low spine of the island. The confusion is old and harmless, and it says something about what the two sides have become between them: one of the busiest and best-known stopping places on the whole Dalmatian coast.

The Pakleni Islands and Sveti Klement

The archipelago is a chain of sixteen limestone islands and islets running roughly ten kilometres across the entrance to Hvar's harbour, with a combined land area of only about 7.2 square kilometres. Sveti Klement accounts for most of that on its own, at 5.28 square kilometres, and its coastline is so deeply indented that it measures nearly thirty kilometres, which is why an island this small has so many separate coves. The highest ground in the chain, Vela glava, reaches just 94 metres. Black pine and Aleppo pine cover the interior, while the shoreline itself is bare rock and maquis.

The name of the group causes as much confusion as Palmižana does. Pakleni is routinely rendered in English as the hell islands, which is folk etymology. It comes instead from paklina, an old word for the pine resin or tar that was once collected here and used to seal wooden hulls, so the name records a working coast rather than an infernal one. Locally the group is often just called Škoji, the islands.

Sveti Klement has three settlements, Palmižana, Momića Polje and Vlaka, none of them permanently inhabited, and the island is officially classed as uninhabited. It takes its name from Pope Clement I, and a church dedicated to him is recorded in the Hvar statute of 1331, although what stands today reflects later rebuilding. Traces of Roman occupation have been noted elsewhere on the island, and the interior still carries vineyards and olive terraces behind the coast.

Anchoring in the Bay

Vinogradišće works as an anchorage for straightforward reasons. The bay is long and narrow, cut deep enough into the island to break any swell, and the bottom is sand, which gives anchors reliable holding. It is sheltered from every direction except the south, and southerly weather is uncommon at the height of summer. Depths through most of the inlet run from around three to ten metres over sand and weed, shoaling steadily towards the head of the bay, where the beach is partly shingle and partly sand.

The practical picture in season is rather less serene than the geography suggests. Much of the bay is now taken up by mooring buoys laid by the waterfront restaurants, and taking one generally carries the expectation that you will eat ashore. Where there is still room to drop the hook, a stern line ashore is the norm rather than a refinement: the inlet is narrow, boats lie close together, and there is simply not enough water for everyone to swing freely. By July and August the cove fills with charter yachts, catamarans and gulets, with tenders tied several deep off the restaurant jetties, and it ranks among the busiest anchorages in Croatia.

None of that has dented its popularity, and the reason is easy enough to see. many charter guests exploring Croatia anchor here for the afternoon, swim off the boat, walk over to the marina side and come back for a long dinner before moving on the following morning.

Palmižana, the Garden and the Marina

The settlement on the northern shore has an unusually well-documented history for somewhere this small. Tourism here dates back to 1906, when Professor Eugen Meneghello began developing his estate on the island and planting imported and exotic species alongside the native pine and olive. The botanical garden that grew out of that work has been maintained by his descendants ever since, and it is the reason Palmižana looks nothing like the bare limestone of the neighbouring islets: palms, agaves, cacti, rosemary and lavender grow here where the surrounding coast supports little beyond scrub.

The ACI marina on the northern side has around 160 berths with water and power and operates seasonally, from the middle of March to late October. It is one of the very few full-service facilities anywhere in the archipelago, which explains why so much traffic funnels through this one island. Hvar Town itself is only about three and a half kilometres away across the channel, and taxi boats make the crossing in roughly ten minutes, leaving from the western side of Hvar's harbour every half hour or so through the season.

That proximity is the whole logic of the place. Hvar became the principal Venetian port in the eastern Adriatic after the administration moved there from Stari Grad in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the Pakleni chain has always been the outer shelter for its harbour. Today it serves as the harbour's overspill: the day-boat circuit out of Hvar usually takes in Jerolim and Marinkovac as well, but it is Sveti Klement that most of the traffic is aiming for.

When to Come

The draw at Vinogradišće is really the combination of a swim and a meal. Around five well-known restaurants line the shore of the bay, several of them long-established family operations connected to the same estate that created the gardens, and it is easy to spend an entire afternoon here without moving the boat. The water stays shallow and calm close to the beach, which makes it comfortable for swimming and safe enough for children.

The bay is at its most crowded from late June to the end of August, when the anchorage can be effectively full by early afternoon. Late May, early June and September deliver the same water and the same short walk across the island with a fraction of the boats, and the marina is open on either side of the peak in any case. If you do come in high season, the hazard worth watching is not anything under the surface but the tenders and yachts manoeuvring a few metres offshore.