The Lun olive groves (Olive Gardens of Lun)
Location: Lun, otok PagLength: 2,6 kmElevation gain: 74 mDifficulty: EasyDifficulty rating: K1, T1, VR1
In Dalmatia, and right across the Mediterranean, the olive tree has the status of a deity. It is inseparably bound up with the history of these lands and plays a very important role not only in the diet but in culture, tradition and life in general.
All along the coast and across the islands you can find olive groves of every kind – tended and untended, newly planted and ancient…
But if you want to see the most impressive olive grove, not just in Croatia but anywhere, you have to make your way to Lun, a small village in the north of the island of Pag. There you will find a grove that is like an open-air art gallery whose exhibits are ancient olive trees in the most imaginative shapes, sculpted by nature herself over thousands of years!
The Lun olive grove has the largest number of thousand-year-old olive trees in the world!
The headline stars of this gallery in the karst, on the information boards and in the literature, are two olive trees aged 1,600 and 2,000 years.
If you are the sort who will race through the grove just to see those two, or if you are coming here for the photographs, this is not the place for you. This is a place to be approached with a measure of respect, a place to be walked slowly and enjoyed in every one of its corners. It is a place of incredible beauty and symbolism, where it is worth pausing to reflect on the transience of life, on history, and on the ages in which generations before us admired these silent witnesses in the shade of those same crowns. Every tree is beautiful and deserves your attention. When you lay a hand on a trunk, you are touching history itself. You are connecting with those who did exactly the same a thousand years before you.
These trees have witnessed the rise and fall of states and empires, and it hardly matters which of them is older than the rest.
Works of art in the form of ancient olive trees, shaped over thousands of years in this open-air gallery of a kind!
Armies, travellers, merchants and pilgrims passed this way. Other children grew up here, weaving their dreams, their wishes and their knowledge into what we inherit today. The oil from these trees may still be hidden somewhere on the seabed, sealed in ancient amphorae.
These olive trees have seen and heard so much, and now here you stand, looking at one another. Each of them could tell its own story, just as every person’s story about this magnificent place would be a different one. Do not go reading those stories in Google reviews, because “we came in summer around midday and it was too hot” is not a story that deserves to be read, still less one that deserves to stand as a description of this place. You have to come to the Lun olive groves in person and find your own story.
Practical information
There are two official entrances to the Lun olive groves. They are 1.5 km apart by road.
Entrance 1 (location: https://goo.gl/maps/ozJF24bKtiiwWfg1A) is the first entrance you come to driving along the road towards Lun. It is the closer one to the “Lunjska čipka”, the olive tree with the distinctively braided trunk.
Entrance 2 (location: https://goo.gl/maps/UhGNfQdxQfUMADZGA) is in the village of Lun itself and is closer to the oldest olive trees. The 1,600-year-old olive is about 450 m from the entrance, and from there it is another 480 m south-east to the 2,000-year-old olive. From there it is some 1.4 km to the “Lunjska čipka”, which stands 200 m from entrance 1.
During opening hours there is a token entrance fee. If you arrive outside opening hours, there is no gate and nobody will stop you looking round.
To walk round the whole grove you should set aside at least 2 hours. It is about 3 km one way, but there will be a great deal of stopping and marvelling. If we really had to pick one entrance for seeing the most interesting part of the grove fastest, we would choose entrance 2 (the one nearer the village), but we would certainly stop at entrance 1 as well and walk the 200 m down to see the “Lunjska čipka”.
There is enough parking in front of the entrances, at least out of season. You can also buy souvenirs and local produce there, and get something to eat at the restaurant.
Signposts to the “main attractions” are set up throughout the garden, and if you want an easier way round the grove, electric vehicles can be hired.
Special
Although our focus is on Croatia, due to great interest in reviewing some international locations from our travels, we decided to launch the Special section. In it, we will not cover locations in the same detailed way we do with Croatian ones, but will instead provide a brief overview of multiple locations grouped into meaningful categories. The only criterion we still strictly follow is that they must be natural attractions.
