Best Places to Visit in Croatia, Top Attractions

If you are planning on visiting Croatia soon, don’t miss this post, because I will tell you the best places to see in Croatia to enjoy your trip to one of the most beautiful European countries. Oozing out a fascinating amalgamation of erstwhile and modern aura, the alluring places to visit in Croatia propel much attention and love. The historic cities of the country are home to a myriad of world-famous attractions that range from ancient architectural marvels and intriguing museums to magnificent defense fortifications and flamboyant promenades. The modernized places in Croatia like Split, Zagreb, and Zadar retain their old world charm and astound tourists with their stunning Roman ruins, medieval buildings, and swanky modern day restaurants and jazzy bars. Cities like Pula, Rijeka, and Osijek offer a peaceful environment and laid-back atmosphere with more of the magnificent cathedrals, palaces, and beaches. The classic tourist attractions in Croatia like Diocletian's Palace, the Old City of Dubrovnik, and Lovrijenac offer an insight of the past stories of glory, destruction, and rivalry. There are breweries, galleries and street markets in its cities; sleepy terracotta-roofed villages that cling to traditional ways of life; high-quality local produce to enjoy and eight national parks to explore. 

#1- Solta
Quite how visitors manage to miss this island that sits directly in front of Split yet is often ignored in favour of Hvar and Brac is a bit of a mystery. With its sleepy fishing villages, a craggy coastline sheltering pebbly coves, and acres of olive groves and vineyards, Solta gives a delicious flavour of slow-paced Dalmatian life. 

#2- Losinj
Losinj is as relaxing and healing as ever, with the fragrance of wild thyme, pine, rosemary, juniper and helichrysum inducing a welcome sense of bliss. Wander past the baroque sea captains’ houses of the main village, Mali Losinj, and its Venetian-style near neighbour, Veli Losinj, before going for a swim in the emperor’s favourite Cikat Bay. Feast on lamb from the neighbouring island of Cres on the waterside terrace of Lanterna Grill after a bike ride on the pine-scented footpath ringing parts of the island.

#3- Kopacki Rit Nature Park
Here in the Kopacki Rit Nature Park where the Danube and Drava rivers meet, you’re surrounded by the luxuriant marshland and waterways that make up one of Europe’s largest wetlands. The whole nature reserve teems with an astonishing amount of wildlife and several hundred species of birds — best enjoyed from one of the boat tours that glide lazily through this serene landscape.

#4- Dubrovnik
Forget the received wisdom that you should tour the 16th-century city walls at 9am — that’s when the big groups arrive at this corner of the Dalmatian Coast to curl around the Unesco world heritage site. Instead, start the day in Dubrovnik gently. Amble along residential streets on the city’s south side — washing strung like bunting, cats in sunny corners — or see art and a dreamy cloister perfumed by orange trees in the Franciscan Monastery.

#5- Telascica Nature Park
What they can’t see is the unruffled water and green aromatic maquis that lie on the other side of the cliffs: the protected marine Eden of Telascica Nature Park. Little more than two hours by ferry from the terracotta-roofed city of Zadar, the park is a living time capsule, with evidence of human habitation dating back beyond the Romans — who built lavish villas and planted olive trees and grapevines on the bakes hillsides — to the earliest man, who left flint tools scattered about the place. 

#6- Brac
The finger of golden shingle framed by cerulean shallows that you’ve seen on countless tourism posters? That’s Zlatni Rat, a Croatian cape by the Brac island town of Bol. This pin-up of Croatian beaches is beautiful, obviously, but also busy: crowds are heavy in peak season and the prices high. Unless you’ve come to windsurf, sort out your tan at Murvica beach, wedged between trees two-and-a-half miles to the west.

#7- Pag
Pag is as silent and magical as a desert. Then from mid-June until late August, Zrce beach morphs into a Croatian Ibiza: tunes from famous Zagreb nightspots Aquarius, Kalypso, Noa, and Papaya; and beautiful people sipping cocktails at beach bars. 

#8- Lopud
The country possesses a coast as long (around 3,700 miles) as it is fractured, resulting in limitless coves, bays, swimming shingles and diving rocks. Some beaches can be reached by car. Others require a taxi-boat or the agility of a mountain goat. All bask in an Adriatic microclimate that climaxes in Hvar. Here nearly 3,000 annual sunshine hours shine on sandy arcs like Pokonji Dol, which is bookended by two shabby-chic beach bars.

#9- Plitvice Lakes National Park
Croatia is home to eight national parks across topography as diverse as Italy’s, which renders the Adriatic a mecca for activities as varied as skiing, diving and inter-island swimming. Head to Plitvice for waterfalls that cascade through bucolic countryside, creating a sybaritic home for wolves, eagles, wildcats and deer — as well as hikers and bikers. It’s home to the Plitvice lakes, but if you’re looking for somewhere to swim, try the Krka river in Krka National Park instead.

#10- Rab
Rab is an island of sand in a country of shingle. Stuff that’s fine enough for making castles lies all along the bays of the Lopar peninsula in the north. Two-kilometre-long Rajska has shallow seas and a lot of gelaterias. 

#11- Korcula
All those lovely things summoned by thoughts of Adriatic Coast holidays — sun glare, beaches, sapphire seas, crisp white wine — come together on the Lumbarda peninsula. Vela Przina beach is over 400 yards of biscuit-coloured sand and blue shallows.