Premuda Island

Premuda is one of the outer islands of the Zadar Archipelago, lying northwest of Zadar between Silba and Škarda in the north Dalmatian island chain. It is a slender island, about 9 kilometres long and never more than 1.6 kilometres wide, rising to just 88 metres at its highest point. The only settlement, also called Premuda, sits around a small harbour and is home today to roughly 60 permanent residents — a fraction of the 577 people recorded living here in 1857.

That population history says a lot about the island's past. Premuda appears in the Roman-era Tabula Peutingeriana as Pamodos, and by the 7th century was known as Primodia — from the Latin primus, meaning first, describing its position as the first island sighted sailing into the Zadar channel from the northwest. In the 16th and 17th centuries Ottoman corsairs repeatedly raided the island and carried islanders off as slaves, reducing the population to just 26 people by 1608. Recovery came slowly through the 18th century, largely through immigration from the neighbouring island of Olib, and by 1760 the population had climbed back to 322, eventually peaking at 577 in 1857 before a long, steady decline through the 20th century. A school opened in 1867 and closed in 1991; electricity reached the island only in 1971, a telephone network not until 1998.

Premuda's economy still rests on olive growing and sheep farming, supplemented today by tourism — the entire island has three restaurants. Divers come for the Katedrala, or Cathedral, a system of connected underwater caves where light falls through gaps in the porous rock ceiling, and for the wreck of the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István, torpedoed by the Italian motor torpedo boat MAS-15 under Luigi Rizzo on 10 June 1918 and now lying capsized at around 66 metres just off the island's coast. Quiet, undeveloped and without mass tourism, Premuda remains a classic stop on a Croatia blue cruise itinerary for boats exploring the outer Zadar islands.