Palmizana

Palmižana sits on Sveti Klement, the largest of the Pakleni Islands off Hvar, not in Split itself, and it is worth being clear about that from the start because the two are often confused in charter listings. The bay faces north towards Hvar Town across a short stretch of water, and over the past century it has grown from a single family's estate on a barren island into one of the busiest and best known anchorages in the central Adriatic. This site has already covered the Meneghello family's founding of tourism here in detail in the Vinogradišće Bay and Sveti Klement articles, so what follows sets that history alongside the geography, the archaeology and the practical shape of the bay as it is today.

The Bay and the Pakleni Islands

The Pakleni chain runs roughly 10 kilometres along the south-west coast of Hvar, directly opposite the entrance to Hvar town harbour, and consists of 16 islands and islets covering about 7.17 square kilometres in total. The name is regularly mistranslated as "Hell's Islands", but it actually comes from paklina, an old word for the pine resin once harvested here and used to coat the hulls of wooden ships. That detail says a good deal about what these islands were for before tourism arrived: they were a working resource for the shipwrights of Hvar.

Sveti Klement is by far the largest of them at 5.28 square kilometres, with an unusually long coastline of nearly 30 kilometres for an island that size, which is why it has so many usable coves. Its coastal fringe is barren and rocky while the interior carries maquis scrub, and it holds three settlements, none of them permanently inhabited year-round: Palmižana on the north side, Vlaka, and Momića Polje. Palmižana bay itself opens to the north, with Vinogradišće Bay on the opposite, southern shore a short walk away across the island's narrow waist.

That southern bay is where most visitors actually swim. Vinogradišće, universally known to tourists simply as Palmižana beach, has a shallow, sandy-bottomed entry mixed with pebble, which is why it works so well for families, and it is ringed by the dense pine forest that Eugen Meneghello planted, with rosemary and heather growing through it. It is about ten minutes by boat from Hvar Town, and the walk across from the marina takes only a few minutes on a shaded path.

A Century of Meneghello Tourism

Tourism on the island began in 1906, when the landowner Eugen Meneghello opened his villa in Vinogradišće Bay to visitors. He also set about planting the estate, importing exotic species and turning what had been a bare, wind-scoured hillside into an arboretum of pines, agaves, cacti, palms and rosemary. There is enough rosemary that the island still carries the nickname "the island of rosemary". His son Giorgio built out the complex on what was already a 300-year-old family estate, and his wife Dagmar has run Palmižana for more than thirty years, latterly with the help of her three children and a grandson. The family has held the property continuously since 1906, now into its third generation.

The estate's other layer is cultural. There is a small art gallery at the Meneghello restaurant showing works from the family's private collection, along with Roman and Greek amphorae recovered from the ancient wrecks in the surrounding waters, one of the larger such collections in the Adriatic. Peacocks wander the gardens, a summer concert programme runs through the season, and the bay has become a regular venue for weddings. Alongside Meneghello itself, a cluster of waterfront restaurants including Toto's, Zori, Bacchus and Laganini has turned a bay with no road access into one of the more talked-about dining destinations in Dalmatia, drawing a clientele that has reportedly included musicians and film stars looking for a quieter alternative to Hvar Town.

Roman Traces on Sveti Klement

Long before the Meneghellos, the island was farmed and settled by the Romans, and the archaeology is substantial. There was a villa rustica at Momići and a considerably larger villa maritima at Soline, a naturally protected cove on the southern side of the island, both dating to the first half of the 1st century AD. Excavation at Soline began as far back as 1956 and 1957 and has continued in modern campaigns using aerial imagery, electromagnetic survey and small-scale soundings.

The finds cover an extraordinarily long span, from the second century BC through to the sixth century AD. The coins alone run from issues of the Illyrian king Ballaios and Roman Republican pieces through Imperial and, most numerous of all, Late Antique coinage, with a Venetian Republic coin at the far end of the sequence. Soline was given protected cultural property status by the Republic of Croatia in 2008. The bay at Vlaka, on the same island, also preserves the remains of a Roman villa, late antique architecture and a harbour site.

The Marina, the Crossing and the Bay Today

The ACI marina at Palmižana is the practical reason so many charter boats end up here. It holds roughly 200 berths, all supplied with water and electricity, with depths in the basin ranging from about 3 to 10 metres, and it operates from mid-March to the end of October. The approach channel from the south is unlit and shallower than 5 metres, so it wants daylight and care. When the marina fills in peak season, boats also anchor in Vinogradišće Bay on the southern side of the island. Water taxis run between Hvar Town and Palmižana through the day and into the evening, a crossing of only 15 to 20 minutes, which is what allows the restaurants to fill with people who never bring a boat at all.

From the dock, a short walk through pine forest brings you to the waterfront. The bay's character has changed accordingly: between the marina traffic, the day-trippers arriving by water taxi and the wedding parties, Palmižana today reads less like a quiet retreat and more like a destination in its own right. It remains a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Split and the waters around Hvar, though anyone hoping for solitude in August will want to look at the smaller Pakleni coves instead.