Istria's Roman amphitheatre, and the truffles nearby

Pula's amphitheatre, ringed by tiers of pale limestone and still substantially intact after roughly two thousand years, is one of the best-preserved Roman arenas anywhere, its outer wall complete enough that all four of its original towers survive in some form, a rarity among Roman amphitheatres even in Italy. Built in the first century AD to seat an audience estimated at over twenty thousand for gladiatorial contests, it was later, more humanely, used for medieval tournaments, and it now hosts concerts and a film festival each summer, one of the few venues anywhere that can plausibly claim continuous entertainment use across two millennia, even allowing for a few long gaps.

Istria, the heart-shaped peninsula at Croatia's north-western tip, was a genuinely provincial outpost of Rome, and Pula's amphitheatre reflects the wealth a well-connected Roman port could generate even far from the capital. The peninsula's position, jutting into the northern Adriatic close to both Italy and the approach to Trieste, has made it a border region for most of its history since, passing between Venetian, Austrian, Italian and eventually Yugoslav and Croatian control within the last century alone, a fact still visible in the mix of Italian and Croatian place names and the bilingual road signs found across much of the region.

The forest that grows better fungi than most people expect

Inland from the coast, the Istrian interior turns hilly and heavily wooded, and the oak forests around the hill town of Motovun have become known, over recent decades, for a product that surprises visitors expecting only seafood and olive oil from a Croatian coastal region: truffles, both the white variety found from autumn through winter and the black variety available for a longer season, hunted with trained dogs in a tradition that has grown from a local curiosity into a genuine export industry, with Istrian white truffles now compared seriously, by chefs and mycologists alike, to the more famous examples from Piedmont across the Adriatic.

Rovinj, and a coastline that still tastes of Venice

Along the coast, Rovinj wears its centuries under Venetian rule more visibly than almost anywhere else in Istria: its old town, built on what was once a small island before the channel separating it from the mainland was filled in during the eighteenth century, is dominated by the bell tower of St Euphemia, modelled closely on the campanile of St Mark's in Venice and visible from well out to sea. The narrow streets below, and the fishing harbour they lead down to, have kept enough of their working character to feel like a functioning port rather than a museum piece, even with the tourist trade Rovinj now also depends on.

Istria rewards a slower pace than the headline sights alone would suggest: a coastal town for the harbour and the architecture, and at least a day inland for the hill towns, the vineyards producing Malvazija white wine, and the forests where, in season, a decent truffle hunt is a genuinely different way to spend an Istrian afternoon than another stretch of coast road.

Motovun itself, perched on a hilltop above the Mirna valley and visible for miles across the surrounding vineyards, makes the obvious base for exploring the truffle country: a small walled town, Venetian in feel like so much of the coast below it, with restaurants that build entire menus around the season's finds, shaving fresh truffle over pasta or eggs at the table rather than relying on the preserved, jarred version found in delis further afield. The town's annual film festival each summer, held partly in the open air within the old walls, adds a second, unrelated reason for a visit that has nothing to do with fungi at all.