Galevac Island

Galevac — known locally as Školjić, "the little islet" — is one of the smallest permanently inhabited islands in the Zadar archipelago and by far one of the easiest to reach. It lies barely 80 metres off the waterfront of Preko on the island of Ugljan, measures roughly 300 by 200 metres with a shoreline of about 650 metres, and is so densely wooded that from the water it reads as a green ring of pine and cypress wrapped around a pale stone monastery.

Six Centuries of Franciscan History

Local tradition holds that followers of St Paul the Hermit settled the islet in the 14th century. The documented turning point comes in 1410, when a Zadar nobleman named Milanje gave the islet to the Franciscans. A church dedicated to St Paul the First Hermit already stood there by that date, and a friar named Vid began raising the monastery alongside it. The complex took shape through the 15th century in the mixture of late Gothic and Renaissance forms typical of the Dalmatian coast, built from the same pale local stone as the towns across the channel.

What makes Galevac unusual is how many secular jobs a small island monastery ended up doing. Over the centuries it served as a lazaretto during outbreaks of plague, as a grammar school, and as a printing house — the "Jadran" press operated here from 1930 to 1945. During the bombing and siege of Zadar in the Second World War, the school on Galevac was the only secondary school teaching in Croatian anywhere between Šibenik and Senj. The Franciscans based here were, for generations, the main providers of education and culture for Preko and the surrounding villages, and the islet remained a stronghold of the Glagolitic tradition well into the 19th century. It was from Galevac's shore, in 1863, that Friar Dragutin Parčić took the first known photograph of Preko.

The Library and the Monastery Collection

The monastery library is the reason Galevac matters beyond its own parish. It holds roughly 4,650 titles across some 7,000 books and periodicals, concentrated in works from the 16th to the 18th centuries and including Glagolitic missals and breviaries printed in Rome. Its best-known item is a copy of the fifth edition of Marko Marulić's Judita, printed in 1527 — Marulić being the Split writer generally regarded as the father of Croatian literature. The whole collection has been formally protected as a Cultural Good of the Republic of Croatia since 2016.

Keeping it intact took real effort. Friar Šime Vladović began restoring and cataloguing the library in 1925, with pupils from the grammar school helping until the war interrupted the work; he returned to it in 1953, and Friar Nikola Gregov took over its care from 1975. In more recent years the monastery's museum collection has been opened to visitors during July and August, which is the practical window for anyone who wants to see the books rather than just the trees. What you find on the islet today is therefore a three-part complex — church, working monastery and museum collection — rather than a ruin, and the Franciscans still offer overnight stays to visitors who want more than an afternoon of it.

What There Is to Do on the Islet

Beyond the monastery, Galevac is essentially a shaded Mediterranean garden you can walk around in a quarter of an hour. Paths run under tall pines, holm oak and cypress. There is a small cemetery holding graves of members of Zadar's intellectual elite, a stone replica of the Lourdes grotto, and a monument to a group of local laundresses who died in a boating accident crossing the channel. Only a handful of people live on the islet permanently, which is part of why it stays quiet even in August.

The shoreline is rocky rather than sandy and slippery in places, so water shoes are worth having. Swimming, snorkelling and kayaking around the islet are the main activities, and the crossing is short enough that plenty of visitors simply swim it. Otherwise, small local boats — the traditional barkajola service — run across from Preko's waterfront in a couple of minutes. Preko is the main port of Ugljan and is connected to Zadar by regular car ferry from the Gaženica terminal, a crossing of roughly 25 to 30 minutes, so Galevac is a genuine half-day trip from the city even without your own boat.

Galevac in a Zadar Archipelago Cruise

For yachts the islet is a stop rather than a base. The seabed immediately around it is rocky, and the channel between Ugljan and the mainland carries constant ferry traffic, so most crews take a berth or a buoy at Preko and cover the last eighty metres by tender. Above the town, the ridge of Ugljan carries St Michael's Fortress, on a hill of about 263 metres — originally a Byzantine fortification of the 6th century, rebuilt by the Venetians in 1202 during the Fourth Crusade — reached by a road of some 3.5 kilometres from the ferry port and worth the detour for the view back over the whole archipelago.

That combination of a five-minute crossing, six hundred years of history and deep shade in the middle of the afternoon is why many charter guests exploring Croatia anchor here for the afternoon before carrying on south through the channel towards Pašman and the Kornati.