The houses rise straight out of the sea. No quay, no parapet: in Rovinj, the ochre, pink and red façades plunge into the Adriatic as in Venice, of which this coast was long a loyal subject. The old town once occupied an island; the residents filled in the channel in 1763, and the peninsula keeps its compact shape, coiled around its hill. Ships anchor offshore and tenders land at the small harbour, at the foot of the first lanes. From the very first steps, Istria reveals its most Italian face here — right down to the language, which many residents still speak.

The climb to Euphemia

Grisia Street climbs straight to the summit, paved with flagstones that generations of footsteps have polished like marble. Painters and ceramicists have set up their studios here: the climb goes from gallery to gallery, between canvases hung on the stone walls. At the very top, the Church of St. Euphemia, the largest Baroque church in Istria, keeps the relics of the saint, a young martyr from the time of Diocletian, in a 6th-century sarcophagus. Its 61-metre bell tower, modelled on that of St. Mark's in Venice, bears at its top a copper statue that turns with the wind. You can climb it by its wooden stairs: the view takes in the entire peninsula, the archipelago and the vine-covered hills.

The maze

The way down is made without a map, and that's for the best. Vaulted passages, laundry strung between façades, doorways adorned with Venetian knockers, stairways that end in the water: each alley composes its own scene. The Balbi Arch, the Baroque gate of the old city, marks the entrance to the maze on the harbour side. Along the way, windows open onto kitchens where brodetto simmers, and the little squares offer their terraces in the shade of the bell towers. Few old towns on the Adriatic can be explored with such simple pleasure.

The batanas, the fishermen's memory

In the harbour, batanas still bob on the water: flat-bottomed boats that fishing families have built here for centuries. An ecomuseum on the waterfront is devoted to them, and the tradition — boatbuilding, songs and fishermen's taverns included — is listed on UNESCO's register of good safeguarding practices. On certain summer evenings, the batanas parade, lanterns lit, to the old wine cellars where people dine on grilled sardines. The spectacle is a reminder that before the holidaymakers, Rovinj lived off its nets.

The Punta Corrente forest

South of the harbour, a fifteen-minute walk leads to the Punta Corrente forest park, planted at the end of the 19th century by an industrialist who loved the place: umbrella pines, cypresses and holm oaks shade pebble coves where locals swim in every season. The paths are ideal for strolling or jogging, and the flat rocks serve as natural sundecks. You return to the ship along the seafront, the silhouette of the bell tower in your sights.

Quick reference

What the sea did not take back

Rovinj was built tightly packed on its rock, and the sea keeps lapping at its foundations without ever carrying anything away. As you leave the bay, you look one last time for the copper statue atop the bell tower — it shows the wind, the fishermen say, but it seems above all to point the way home. Grisia, the saint, the boats: everything here fits in a pocket handkerchief, and it's this closeness that gives the place its strength.