Just an Hour’s Drive from Split, Šibenik Will Awe You With Medieval Charm

During my summer hiatus from backpacking in Central Florida, I’ve decided to spend the next several weeks posting about the towns and islands my family and I visited during our weeklong sailing trip in June on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. If you’re interested in learning more about what it’s like to charter a sailboat in the Adriatic (including costs of renting a sailboat and hiring a skipper), check out my latest article in Go World Travel, “Why a Croatian Sailing Charter is the Perfect Family Vacation.”

This week, I’ll discuss Šibenik.

For the last in my series of posts about the places we visited in Croatia, I can’t help but add a city that we did not reach by boat, but instead visited the day before we flew home as part of a guided tour of Krka National Park. Šibenik captured my imagination with its UNESCO World Heritage Sites and beautiful medieval old town rolling gently over a seaside hill. At roughly an hour’s drive from the airport in Split, Šibenik is worth a stop if you are planning a trip to the Dalmatian Coast.

Technically not on the Adriatic Sea, Šibenik lies just inland on a bay of the same name connected to the Adriatic by the Canal of St. Anthony, just southeast of the mouth of the Krka River.  Šibenik is also an ideal place to stay if you plan to visit Krka National Park, which is only 30 minutes away and shares a historic connection. As I mentioned in my prior post about Krka National Park, back in 1895, the hydroelectric power plant at the Park’s Skradinski Buk falls delivered the electricity that made Šibenik the first city in the world with streetlights powered by alternating current. Replicas of the original lamps adorn many lanes in the old town today.

Founded by Slavs in the 9th century, Šibenik is celebrated in Croatia for its resistance to Turkish invasion in the 16th and 17th centuries, as it remained one of the few cities in the region to never be conquered by the Ottomans. Its proudest moment came in 1646, when the citizens of Šibenik, having been denied funding by their Venetian overlords to build fortifications to repel an imminent attack, erected the St. John’s Fortress on a hill north of the city in just 58 days. Although the walls held, Šibenik was decimated just three years later by the Bubonic Plague, which killed 85 percent of the population and stunted the city’s growth in the ensuing centuries.

Today, Šibenik is the Dalmatian Coast’s third largest city and, judging by the number of brides we saw, a favorite destination for summer weddings. It also hosts the International Children’s Festival, which was going on while we were there and had festooned the streets with banners of flags painted by children from around the world.

Šibenik’s old town lies between the sea and St. Michael’s Fortress, atop a hill in the middle of the city where the town was first settled. Narrow cobblestone lanes rise gradually toward the fortress, lined by medieval monasteries, guild houses, and merchants’ homes, many of which now house galleries, shops, and pretty cafes on their ground floors.

The heart of the old town is the Cathedral of St. James, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built in the 15th and 16th centuries. Along with its awe-inspiring interior and monumental dome, the Cathedral is famous for the sculpted masterpieces adorning its exterior, including sculptures of Christ and the 12 apostles arcing over the western main portal carved by Bonino da Milano and the 74 heads of everyday citizens adorning the apses carved by the humanist master Juraj Dalmatinac.

Šibenik is a wonderful place to wander. With its hilly terrain at the base of St. Michael’s Fortress, the buildings on its curving cobbled lanes seem to tower above you like canyon walls, with each crest looking down upon another pretty view of a monastery or lanes lined with flowers. And although the town rises quite a bit toward the hilltop fortress, your legs won’t notice if you follow the best gently sloping routes.

Dream Tours Dalmatia

I would also be remiss if I did not offer my glowing endorsement of the tour guide who introduced us to Šibenik, Petar Sinovčić, owner of Dream Tours Dalmatia. Petar shuttled us from destination to destination in his spacious touring van while showering us with historical and cultural insights that kept even my school-fatigued teenage daughter entertained. He even fine-tuned our walking routes to avoid larger tour groups and was politely assertive when clearing other tourists from choice spots for the many photos he took of our family.

We chose Dream Tours Dalmatia because we wanted to book a private tour that would allow us both to learn more from a local expert and avoid the inconvenience of driving. Petar and Dream Tours perfectly suited our needs, and he also offers tours of other attractions in Croatia, including Dubrovnik, Zagreb, and Plitvice National Park. If you’re looking to book a guided tour during a trip to Croatia, you can’t go wrong with Petar and Dream Tours Dalmatia.