Island of Hvar

… and at the end of this long bay, turned to the west, at the place where the blue surface of the sea turns into green, appears an ancient town “the historic heart of the island Hvar”.
Its field, warm hearted with a human hand, its bay, made in a God’s play is very parts of the town. If you want to recover the secret and the beauty of it’s long lasting Stari Grad is an invitation for the journey through time …

Stari Grad

At the dawning of this 24 centuries old town, at the time of the ninety ninth Olympic Games, when the Archon Diotrephes resided in Athens, and the consuls Lucius Valerius and Aulus Manilius resided in Rome, the Greeks sailed in 384/385 BC from the island Paros and erected on the ruins of the Illyrian settlement the town of Pharos fortified by the Cyclopean walls.

The army commander Demetrius, the cunning tyrant and the favorite of the Illyrian Queen Teute, ruled the powerful Pharos in the third century. His unquenchable hunger for power determined the destiny of the flourishing town. Demetrius insolently affronted Rome, the consequence being the destruction of Pharos in 219 BC by Roman consul Emilius Paulus.
The town was resurrected as the Roman town of Pharia. The mosaics from the first centuries after Christ, some of them dug out and some still hidden under the paved streets, recall the times when Starogradsko polje (the field of the Old Town) - the Ager of Pharos, green with vineyards since the times of the Greek settlers, was colonized by Roman veterans who raised their villas there. The citizens from Pharos passed along the stone roads, old even at that time, which regularly intersected the Fields during the eternal vintage festivities in September. Here, wine has always been a precious joy and reward.

There are numerous stops on the journey through time evoked by Stari Grad. The names of town: - Pharos, Pharia, Slavic Huarra, then in the late Middle Ages Civitas vetus, finally blossoming into Cittavecchia /Stari Grad/, the town of active tradesmen and members of the shipping trade. However, the true festivity of its millennium-long existence is revealed on entering the mythical fortified place of Tvrdalj, raised by the poet, the nobleman Petar Hektorović who was throughout his life dedicated to it. It contained everything a sixteenth century sage needed: seclusion, however, seclusion that lends itself to the joy of companionship in the shady gardens, beside the fish-pond and the dovecote, protected by the thick walls of the fortress. In Tvrdalj, under the shady cloister round the fish-pond, in the poet's house who contemplated the eternity where even today one can hearken the bills of ephemerally of this world.