Hvar, lavender and the island's old towns

Hvar has a reputation, and the reputation is mostly about one town. Hvar town, on the south-west of the island, has a harbour full of yachts in summer, a square of pale stone and a nightlife that people talk about. That is all true, and it is a small part of the island. Hvar is long and narrow, a ridge of limestone in the Adriatic off the Dalmatian coast, and away from the harbour it is a place of old stone villages, terraced hillsides, olive groves, vineyards and, in early summer, the scent of lavender.

The lavender villages

For much of the twentieth century lavender was one of Hvar's crops. Around 1928 to 1930 the people of Velo Grablje, a village in the hills above Hvar town, began to grow it systematically and to distil its oil, and for a time the village was the centre of lavender production for the whole of Dalmatia. At one point Hvar was counted among the larger lavender producers in the world.

It did not last. Emigration took the young people of the villages away, and forest fires destroyed many of the old fields, and the industry collapsed. Lately, though, it has come back to a degree. A local association revived the cultivation, and since 2008 it has held a lavender festival in the village, with harvesting, distilling, food and music. The harvest, which locals call simply the picking, traditionally begins in late June or early July, when the flowers are at their deepest purple. There are fields around Brusje too, and near Jelsa, and the scent reaches the road.

The Greek fields of Stari Grad

On the north coast of the island is Stari Grad, whose name means simply "Old Town". It earns it. In 384 BC Greek settlers from the island of Paros, in the Aegean, founded a colony here called Pharos, and divided the plain behind it into regular plots of farmland, separated by stone walls. Those plots are still there. The Stari Grad Plain, with its ancient grid of fields and walls, still farmed for grapes and olives, was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2008, as a cultural landscape that has remained essentially intact since the Greeks laid it out.

It is an extraordinary thing to walk through. The walls are low and the fields small, and nothing about them announces their age. You have to be told, and then you look again at an ordinary olive grove and realise that its boundaries were drawn when Plato was alive.

Stari Grad itself is a calm harbour town, much quieter than Hvar town.

Hvar town and its theatre

Hvar town deserves its visit too, and not only for the harbour. On the main square is the Arsenal, built around 1610 to 1613 under the Venetian governor Semitecolo, and in it, in 1612, the town opened a theatre. It is often described as one of the oldest public theatres in Europe, and one local account calls it the first publicly owned theatre on the continent. Either way, it is a remarkable thing to find above a harbour full of yachts.

Holidays that reach Hvar

Three holidays in the catalogue include Hvar.

Explore Worldwide's seven-night Cycle the Dalmatian Coast is the one that sees most of the island. Its places include Kastel Kambelovac and Split on the mainland, then Hvar, Jelsa, Brusje and Hvar town, and Korcula with Racisce, Lumbarda, Cara, Zavalatica and Pupnat. It has departures in every month from April to October.

Just You's seven-night Croatian Island Explorer has Hvar and Stari Grad among its places, along with Krka National Park, Šibenik, Zadar, Primosten, Brač and Milna, Trogir and Split.

Travelsphere's seven-night Croatian Island Hopping lists Hvar with Korcula, Mljet, Dubrovnik, Milna, Split, Seget Donji and Marina Baotic.

If you have time on Hvar, divide it between the harbour and the hills. Spend an evening in Hvar town, by all means. But take a morning to drive or cycle up into the villages, or out along the Stari Grad Plain, and you will find an island that is older, quieter and stranger than the yachts would suggest.