Zadar

Zadar, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, is a city that has been surprising visitors since antiquity — one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the Adriatic, layered with Roman, medieval and modern history, and home to two of the most original public art installations in the world. Alfred Hitchcock once declared that Zadar has the most beautiful sunset in the world. He was watching from the Sea Organ — an architectural sound installation by Nikola Bašić, a set of marble steps on the seafront beneath which 35 pipes create music from the movement of the waves. Adjacent to it is the Greeting to the Sun — a solar-powered light installation of 300 glass and steel circles embedded in the pavement that illuminates in shifting colours after dark. Together they form a promenade experience found nowhere else. The Roman Forum, still functioning as a public square after 2,000 years, is the heart of the old city — surrounded by the 9th-century Church of St. Donatus (an unusual cylindrical pre-Romanesque structure used today for summer concerts) and the Cathedral of St. Anastasia, the largest Romanesque church in Dalmatia. The narrow lanes of the medieval old city are excellent for wandering. Zadar is less crowded than Dubrovnik and Split and arguably more authentic — local restaurants still cater primarily to locals. An excellent base for the Kornati Islands and Plitvice Lakes.