Brijuni Islands

Brijuni National Park is a group of 14 islands off the west coast of Istria, near Pula and Fažana, covering about 7.5 square kilometers in total. The two largest, Veli Brijun (5.6 km²) and Mali Brijun (1.07 km²), account for most of that area; the rest are small islets and reefs, separated from the Istrian mainland by the shallow Fažana Strait.

Dinosaurs, Romans and a Byzantine Fort

Over 200 dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous period have been found across four sites on Veli Brijun, now presented as the Brijuni Cretaceous Park, and human settlement here reaches back at least to a Bronze Age hillfort of the 14th century BC. The islands hold Roman-era remains, including a villa at Verige Bay dating to the 1st century BC. That villa grew into one of the grandest maritime estates on the Adriatic, reaching its peak in the first century AD with residential wings strung around the bay, its own harbour works and temples raised to Neptune, Venus and the Capitoline Triad; parts of it were still in use in the sixth century. From the early fifth century a late-antique settlement spread around another Roman villa on the west coast and was walled for defence in the mid-fifth century, producing the Byzantine castrum, the most densely stratified archaeological site in the archipelago. St Mary's church nearby is thirteenth-century and associated with the Knights Templar. Plague emptied the islands in 1312, and when Venice claimed them in 1331 there was nobody left to resist; for centuries afterwards the low ground reverted to marsh and the malarial mosquito ruled.

Kupelwieser, Koch and the Grand Hotel Era

In 1893, Viennese industrialist Paul Kupelwieser bought the islands and developed them into a health resort; between 1900 and 1901 the bacteriologist Robert Koch worked there on malaria eradication, treating the population with quinine and draining the standing water where mosquitoes bred, until the archipelago was declared malaria-free in 1901. What followed was a boom. Kupelwieser cleared scrub, laid out roads and planted the parkland that still defines the islands, then built hotels, seawater baths and a golf course that earned Brijuni a reputation as the Adriatic answer to Biarritz. The 18-hole course still in play measures roughly 5,486 metres to a par of 71, and international polo returned to the islands in 2004.

Tito's Second Capital

From 1945 the archipelago served as the summer residence of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito; the Bijela vila, or White Villa, became his formal residence in 1953, and his last recorded stay was in 1979. In 1956 it hosted the meeting between Tito, Nehru and Nasser that led to the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement, and across three decades close to a hundred foreign heads of state came to the islands, among them Queen Elizabeth II and Che Guevara. A safari park with animals given to Tito by visiting foreign leaders, including the Indian elephants Sony and Lanka along with zebras, nilgai and zebu, was established on Veli Brijun in 1978, and the whole archipelago was declared a national park in 1983. The political thread did not end with Tito: the Brioni Agreement that halted the fighting in Slovenia was signed here in July 1991.

What Grows and Lives There

Veli Brijun alone has around 600 recorded plant species, and the park is home to introduced deer and mouflon as well as native bird life. Chital deer, fallow deer and mouflon were brought in during the early twentieth century and still move freely across the meadows, while an ethno-park keeps native Istrian oxen, sheep and donkeys. The best-known individual plant is an olive tree on Veli Brijun estimated at more than 1,600 years old and still bearing fruit. It is worth remembering that the landscape is a made thing: the open parkland of holm oak, laurel and cypress that visitors walk through today is the result of a century and a half of deliberate clearing, planting and grazing.

Visiting the Islands

The Ulysses Theatre on Mali Brijun hosts open-air performances in July and August, staged inside a disused Austro-Hungarian fortress. The islands are reached only by boat, from Fažana, and are among the stops most often included when routes are best reached during a gulet cruise along the Croatia coast. The crossing from Fažana, six kilometres up the coast from Pula, takes about 15 minutes. Private cars have been banned since the national park was declared, so movement on Veli Brijun is by tourist train, bicycle, electric cart or on foot, and visitor numbers are capped, with day trips normally sold as guided excursions. Four hotels on Veli Brijun allow overnight stays for those who want the islands after the last boat leaves. Late spring and early autumn are the most comfortable months for walking the archaeological trail, the Cretaceous footprint sites and the safari park loop.