Tijat Island

Tijat is an uninhabited island in the northern Dalmatian archipelago, lying in Šibenik-Knin County southwest of Vodice and west of Prvić. It covers 2.78 square kilometres, has a coastline of 10.489 kilometres and rises to 119 metres at its highest point, Vela glava. Nobody lives there, but the land is far from ownerless: most of it belongs to families from Šepurine on the neighbouring island of Prvić, who have worked and grazed it for generations.

Where Tijat Sits in the Šibenik Archipelago

The island lies south of Tribunj and Vodice, north of Zmajan across the narrow Zmajanski channel, and west of Prvić, a position that puts it squarely in the cluster of small islands strung out in front of Šibenik. Prvić itself is barely 2.4 square kilometres and holds two car-free villages, Prvić Luka and Prvić Šepurine, linked by a one-kilometre road closed to motor traffic; Prvić Luka is where the polymath and inventor Faust Vrančić spent his childhood, and the village keeps his memory as its main claim to fame. Zlarin, the next island toward Šibenik, is also car-free and is known locally as the coral island for its long tradition of coral diving and craftsmanship.

The archipelago falls into three rough bands: Zlarin and Prvić lie nearest the city and carry the villages, Tijat, Zmajan and Kakan are uninhabited, and Kaprije and Žirje sit furthest out facing the open sea. Tijat is the odd one out even among the empty islands, because nothing was ever built on it. There is no village, no harbour and no road, and the old footpaths that once crossed the island have largely disappeared under scrub, so walking any distance inland is now difficult. That emptiness is exactly what draws boats to it: Tijat is a place to anchor and swim rather than a place to go ashore and explore.

Olives, Mouflon and Old Lime Kilns

The island was not always bare. It was once wooded and partly cultivated, and roughly 2,500 olive trees still stand on it, although today most of the surface is karst rock with patches of maquis. The main historical economic activity on Tijat was burning quicklime, a trade that has long since ended.

The biggest change to the landscape came in 1992, when 14 pairs of mouflon were released on the island as game animals. With no natural predators to check them the herd multiplied to roughly 500 animals, and the browsing pressure has done serious damage to the olive groves and to what remained of the island's other vegetation.

The summit carries a large iron cross, erected on 3 March 1933 and visible from a considerable distance at sea. During the work to put it up, labourers uncovered a grave bearing a Glagolitic inscription, a reminder that the island was in use long before anyone thought to mark it. The cross is also the island's one real viewpoint, opening out over the whole of the surrounding archipelago.

Tijašćica Bay and Anchoring

On the southeastern side of the island, Tijašćica is the bay that matters. It is sheltered from every direction except the jugo, the southerly and southeasterly wind, and there is a small restaurant on shore, the only facility anywhere on Tijat. Boats generally anchor toward the head of the bay in about five to six metres over sand and weed, which holds well. In summer the inlet fills with yachts, and the island's entire population is whoever happens to be aboard them.

Fuel, supplies and berths are all on the mainland a short hop away. Vodice, the nearest town, sits in a wide bay 11 kilometres northwest of Šibenik, had 8,649 residents at the 2021 census and holds ACI Marina Vodice; Tribunj, three kilometres further along the coast and a village of about 1,594 people, has a large marina of its own. Between them they cover everything Tijat does not.

Tijat sits well north of the Split archipelago, in the waters off Vodice and Šibenik, so it is not a typical call on a short week out of Split, but longer itineraries that push north toward the Kornati do treat it as one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Split.

The Ferry That Carried the Island's Name

In Croatia, Tijat is arguably better known as a ship than as an island. The passenger vessel Tijat was built in 1955 at the Split shipyard, carried 300 passengers, and spent almost its entire working life with Jadrolinija on line 505, the Šibenik-Zlarin-Prvić Luka-Šepurine-Vodice run. It made its final voyage on 8 July 2023 after 68 years of service, and the send-off was covered across Croatian media as the end of an era for the islanders it had connected for three generations.

What followed was less romantic. Šibenik-Knin County bought the vessel from Jadrolinija for 35,000 euros intending to turn it into a floating museum, completed a first round of repairs at the Iskra shipyard in Šibenik in May 2024 under a tender worth 48,000 euros, and secured 1.2 million euros from the Island Development Fund for the conversion. The county later abandoned the project on cost grounds and put the ship up for sale instead, at an asking price of 44,900 euros.