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TheWanderingCamel Says: Roman sarcophagi lying by the road through the hilltop village of Skrip are the first sign that this place was inhabited - and was important - long before the present houses and churches of the little town were built here. Walk around the base of the massive Radkovic Tower...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Sumartin, at the very eastern end of Brac, is only 30 minutes by ferry from Makarska on the mainland. 15th century refugees from the hinterland of Makarska came here to escape the Turks who had invaded their lands. They brought with them their dialect and their customs both...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Sumartin and Selca lie just a few kilometres apart but seperated by a high hill, St Nicholas's Mount, at the eastern end of the island. Inland Selca is known as "the town in love with stone". Everything here - houses, pavements, walls, stairs - even the gutters under the...
TheWanderingCamel Says: It's appropriate that Brac's island museum is housed in what is historically the most important building on the island - the Radojkovic Tower complex in Skrip. The tower itself shows clearly three levels of stone masonry - huge Illyrian stone at the base, a Roman mausoleum...
TheWanderingCamel Says: The dedication of Skrip's parish church to Sveta Jelena (St Helena - the mother of Constantine I) tells of an old island tradition that the saint was born here in Skrip. True or not (other villages on Brac also claim the honour but in fact Bithynia in Turkey is more the...
TheWanderingCamel Says: The only town on Brac's south coast, and the only town on the island not tucked away into a sheltered cove, Bol is the the island's most popular holiday destination and one of the earliest settlements. The choice of such an unprotected stretch of coastline for the settlement...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Like Pucisca, Lozisca has a lovely, elegant bell tower that stands tall over all the houses, but this is an inland village, no harbour here, rather steep sides of as rocky ravine where the houses, in their serried ranks, one row above the other, all face south to catch the...
TheWanderingCamel Says: The village of Postira was founded in the 16th century, but right beside the parish church of St John the Baptist lies evidence of a much older settlement here - the foundations of a 2-aisled early basilica, most probably the church of a monastery that occupied this land in...
Konoba Toni, Dol, Brac: complimentry figs and brandies in Dol
marktynernyc Says: Upon our arrival in Dol at Toni's - figs and brandies were proffered to us and the owners showed us around their konoba. One of the brothers came out from the kitchen with an octopus draped over his arm and asked if we would like octopus salad as a starter. Yes we said. My...
Bol's green market: Fresh, fresh, fresh
TheWanderingCamel Says: Whether you're looking for some cheese and salad for dinner or fruit for a snack, Bol's little green market, set out under the trees just one row back from the harbour, is the place to shop. There are a couple of supermarkets in the town, a small one near the waterfront and...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Jadrolinija operates the ferry service between Split and Brac. The ferry port is at Supetar, on the island's north coast, almost directly opposite Split. It takes just over an hour to make the crossing.During high summer the service runs pretty well right around the clock...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Split- Supetar isn't the only crossing from the mainland to Brac. A small ferry operates between Markaska, south of Split, and Sumartin on the island's eastern tip. This is very convenient if you're travelling to or from Dubrovnik as it cuts about 60km off the distance...
TheWanderingCamel Says: You can't really depend on the buses on Brac to get you all around the island - the island's topography and local custom works against any wide network of public transport. Buses only run out from Supetar to the main towns of Bol, Milna, Skrip and Sumartin so you need to hub...
Photos:
1. Lime washed roofs
2. Vintage
3. Autumn fruit
4. Deserted beaches
5. Fishing boats
Come October and Brac takes on a very different aspect from the summer scene of holiday makers enjoying themselves and locals busily seeing to all their needs. With the vacationers gone, there's time now for local residents to see to their own needs, time to give an old stone roof a coating of lime wash to waterproof it against winter storms, time for vintage - to pick the grapes and make the wine. The cherries and apricots of early summer are long gone, now it's the rosy globes of ripening pomegranates that hang on the trees. The beaches are deserted, the pleasure boats mothballed - only fishermen venture out of the harbour now.
Visitors will find most of the restaurants and bars closed, the shops that sell the knick-knacks and trinkets, swimsuits and sunscreen that make a summer holiday all have their shutters down. The weather can be quite changeable, balmy days giving way to chilly nights. It certainly isn't the time to come looking for sun and days lazing on a beach but it's ideal for taking long walks that the often baking days of summer preclude and for slipping into the quieter ways of island life as it was before the tourist boom.
Updated Mar 10, 2012
TheWanderingCamel Says: ... off the beaten track as you can get, is the tiny chapel of Sveti Nikola, high on hill between Selca and Sumartin at the western end of Brac. Dating from between the 9th and the 11th centuries, there are several of these ancient chapels dotted around Brac, most of them...
marktynernyc Says: "...Skrip is the oldest settlement on the island. Set on the top of the hill, with its belfry, church facade and huge towers it appears like a town strangly lost in this karst. It is a monument in which three ethnic layers have deposited (Illyrian, Roman and Croatian) the...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Seeing our first bunje on Brac , and being told they were the houses of the Illyrians, we became intrigued with the lost tribes who built them. The name rang bells - echoes of Shakespeare studied at school - wasn't Orsino the Duke of Ilyria? The bunjes we saw didn't look...
TheWanderingCamel Says: I think everyone who comes to Bol takes a photo of this house. With its three-gabled facade, faded pink walls and green shutters, it stands out quite distinctly . Facing west, it looks particularly lovely as the setting sun washes its old pink walls with gold. Like most of...
TheWanderingCamel Says: Two staples of the Mediterranean world, wine and olives have always played the most important role in Brac's economy. The island has been famed for its olive oil since ancient times - local legend has it that the first olives were planted here by a soldier returning from the...
TheWanderingCamel Says: As patterns of settlement on Brac saw people move from the safety of the interior plateau, where living was hard and harsh, to the gentler environment of the island's many sheltered bays in the 15th century, new styles of church building began to appear. The small and simple...
MrL's grandfather died long before he was born so they were never able to talk about the faraway island where the older man was born, grew up and left as a young man to seek his fortune on the...
http://www.croatians.com/Bracisland.htm By Peter Simunovic Brac pronounced Brach. "....On this island man and stone have lived and fought each other from time immemorial. This island is my rock.......
Brac - most famous for its WHITE STONE
The largest villages on Brac: Supetar Splitska Mirca Skrip The island hosts: - the most famous beach on the Adriatic: Zlatni Rat in Bol - White stone quarries whose stone is also in the White...
My first Croatian island experience was to Hvar, which was nice, but my last visit was to Brac and it was great. I enjoy going to the island not for beach and sun (I grew up in southern California...
Build your own Otok Brac page
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