Kaprije

Kaprije is one of the smaller inhabited islands of the Šibenik archipelago, lying roughly 15 kilometres southwest of Šibenik in the central part of the Croatian Adriatic. It covers 7.11 square kilometres, has a coastline of just over 25 kilometres wrapped around that modest area, and rises to a high point of 129 metres at Velika glavica. There is a single settlement, also called Kaprije, and no cars are allowed anywhere on the island.

A Hill Island Named After a Caper

The island takes its name from the Mediterranean caper, the plant whose flower buds are pickled and used as a spice and which grows freely across the dry ground here. The interior is a landscape of low hills divided by transverse and longitudinal valleys where grass and sparse pine forest grow, and where the flatter, workable ground has been terraced for centuries into vineyards and olive groves. Grapes and olives remain the island's principal crops, alongside fishing and, more recently, tourism.

The population follows the familiar Dalmatian island curve. Kaprije counted 166 inhabitants in 1857 and grew rapidly through the second half of the nineteenth century, reaching 605 by 1900 and peaking at around 710 in 1910. Then came the long decline: 560 in 1921, 310 by 1961, a low of 143 in 1991, and 186 in 2011. The 2021 census recorded 189 residents, one of the rare upticks in the island's modern record. Administratively the settlement belongs to the City of Šibenik.

Nobles, Refugees and a Church

Kaprije enters the written record as the property of mainland families rather than as a community in its own right. In the fourteenth century it was held by the Ljubić family, and from around 1500 it belonged to the Šibenik noble house of Divić. Permanent settlement began in the fifteenth century and accelerated sharply through the sixteenth and seventeenth, when Ottoman advances on the mainland pushed refugees out to the offshore islands. A good many of today's islanders descend from those arrivals.

It was in that period, around the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that the island's church of Saint Peter was built; it was enlarged in 1801. The dedication carries over to the main harbour, the Port of Saint Peter, where the village stands. Agriculture and fishing supported the community for centuries, and the archives preserve the small details of that economy: a document of 1560 records lime being produced on the island. The Homeland War of 1991 passed without damage here, and the settlement has kept its shape.

Coves, the Ferry and a Wreck at 55 Metres

For anyone arriving by sea, the coastline is the attraction. Kaprije has roughly twenty coves, among them Mala Nozdra and Velika Nozdra, Gračice and Remetić, most of them empty for most of the year. The main harbour is deep, with something like 15 metres of water, so larger vessels are not obliged to stand off. Kaprije is connected to Šibenik by a car ferry and by a subsidised fast catamaran service, together averaging two to three sailings a day; the same route also serves neighbouring Žirje, with calls at Zlarin twice a week.

Off the island's northern tip lies one of the better-known wrecks in the Croatian Adriatic. The Francesca da Rimini was a cargo ship built at Rijeka in 1942, 42 metres long and 12 metres in the beam, at 281 tons. Seized by the German navy in 1943, she was put to work moving weapons and ammunition along the coast. On 22 March 1944, disabled by engine failure, she anchored close in to Kaprije and was camouflaged with straw to make her look like a continuation of the shoreline. Two British Spitfires spotted her anyway. She was struck on the starboard quarter and sank, and she now lies at 55 metres. Two of her three masts lie broken in the sand; the third still stands, rising to about 28 metres, and an anti-aircraft gun remains at the stern among scattered mines and ammunition crates. It is a technical dive rather than a casual one.

Life on an Island Without Cars

The ban on vehicles is not a tourism gimmick but a consequence of the island's road network, which was never built out in the first place. Getting around means walking, and the distances are short enough that this is no hardship. Water reaches the village through a local network of roughly 250 connections fed by a reservoir holding 500 cubic metres. There are no large hotels: visitors stay in private rooms and apartments, or sleep aboard.

That quietness, combined with a short sailing distance from the mainland, is what makes Kaprije a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Sibenik, usually as a deliberate counterpoint to the busier ports elsewhere in the archipelago.