Brijuni National Park

Almost everyone will have been to Brijuni as a child. It is a place under constant siege from school trips. The safari park, beautiful meadows framed by centuries-old pines, fossilised dinosaur footprints, museums, the remains of Roman and Byzantine buildings… Brijuni seems to hold every card needed to delight anyone. That is what we thought too, so we decided to go back and bring our childhood memories to life again.

Did Brijuni live up to our expectations?

What are Brijuni?

Brijuni National Park takes in the whole archipelago facing Fažana, a small town north of Pula. Only the island of Veliki Brijun, however, is open to visitors. Landing on any other island in the archipelago is strictly forbidden. That was our first disappointment with Brijuni.

The ban on landing was explained by the park guides somewhat vaguely as a combination of environmental protection and national security, because of the military infrastructure spread across the islands. One of the islands also holds Tito’s former estate. Besides Tito, it housed the staff who kept the whole thing running. Apparently it was his favourite place to stay. Every member of the working class of the state of the day would presumably have liked to enjoy a private island of their own, but with the slightly more than 1,200 islands Croatia has, that would unfortunately have been impossible. That must be why only Tito had his own island. Who inherits that estate now we do not know, but it is certainly not one of today’s “working class”. We have no idea how, but things like that only ever end up with the “non-working class”.

So when they sell you tickets for a visit to Brijuni, what that means is a visit to Veliki Brijun.

Getting to Brijuni

Boat departure point: 44.927015554528396, 13.801656769030819

The boat to Brijuni leaves from the pier at Fažana. You can leave the car in a large car park only a couple of minutes’ walk from the pier. It is wise to buy tickets online in advance. To prevent overcrowding, and because of the limited capacity of the boats, tickets are sold for specific time slots. This is excellent practice, introduced by several of our national parks and nature parks (Krka National Park and Biokovo Nature Park, for instance).

The boat generally runs every hour. The crossing takes about 20 minutes. The crush at boarding, especially in the peak slots, can be considerable, but the organisation is up to it and boarding goes quickly and without trouble.

Touring Brijuni

1. The pier and its supporting facilities (hotels, vehicle hire…)
2. The quarry walkway
3. The museum
4. The golf course
5. The safari park
6. The train turnaround, the fossilised dinosaur footprints
7. The Mediterranean Garden
8. The Roman villa
9. The Byzantine castrum and the church of St. Mary

Receiving visitors on Veliki Brijun is well organised. Guests are divided into those who want to see the island under their own steam and those who have bought a guided tour as part of the ticket price. As we wanted to learn as much as possible about the place, we opted for the guided tour, which covers the island partly by electric train and partly on foot. After the guided tour everyone can spend as long as they like exploring on their own, so we carried on according to our own plan.

At the pier, which sits centrally on the landward side of the island, you are met by guides who form the groups for boarding the little trains.

The main destination is the safari park, at the far northern tip of the island.

Based on the information we had, our expectations of the safari park were high. And as tends to happen, high expectations often lead to an equally large disappointment. Disappointment with the safari park was the second in the series.

The safari park is an enormous stretch of open grass framed by pine forest, with scattered “islets” of handsomely shaped large pines. Visually very attractive, but empty and monotonous. Of animals, mostly not a sign. Here and there in the corners of the meadow, a very long way off, we saw a few zebras and donkeys. We also saw one llama, and in a small fenced enclosure a couple of ostriches.

The old elephant, the only surviving specimen of her kind here, is in a tightly fenced little enclosure beside the train turnaround.

The train turnaround is the furthest point the little train reaches. Taking the centre as your reference, it is up and to the left. There is a stop of about 10 minutes here. Too little for anything meaningful. Essentially you can choose between queuing for the toilet and running to the shade by the road where a few zebras have gathered in the meantime. With a well-worked-out tactic (sprint to the toilet before everyone else), we managed both, and even got a photograph of the elephant, but we barely made it back to the train as it was getting ready to leave.

On this part of the island, right on the shore, there is also the so-called Dino Park with the fossilised dinosaur footprints, which we wanted to see but did not manage to for lack of time. Our guide told us we could come back later under our own steam to look at this part of the island in more detail. Since we had already seen the zebras and visited the toilet, fossilised footprints were not quite enough of a motive for repeating the trip to such a distant point on the island. We felt we were on the conveyor belt of mass tourism where every minute is charged for. Fifteen extra minutes would have made a big difference. As it was, we simply arrived at our third disappointment.

The train takes a different route back, on which we discover the systematic devastation of the island by concrete structures of various purposes, long since abandoned. Not only did we fail to feel on Brijuni that elemental, natural, Mediterranean quality the leaflets advertise, the island also fell short as a park. Veliki Brijun is an epitaph to human arrogance and the conceit that one can make something lovelier and better than nature herself – an attempt in which it fell short. It is a monument to a failed human experiment that set out to turn the island into a multi-purpose space nobody today knows quite what to do with, other than lead tours of visitors around it who will only be impressed if this is their first contact with the Mediterranean.

Speaking of the Mediterranean feel that Brijuni so often advertises, Veliki Brijun has a Mediterranean Garden which ought to be the best advocate for that idea.

We expected it to be at least somewhere in the territory of the one on Lokrum, but again we were left disappointed.

The garden is quite large (17,000 m2). It used to serve as a nursery supplying the whole park, and was then promoted to a garden in its own right within the park. Compared with the arboretum at Trsteno or with Lokrum, it is fairly sterile and dull. It lacks even a subtle note of the wildness and freedom that is otherwise the hallmark of the Mediterranean.

Veliki Brijun is not a big island, but it is just big enough to make getting round it on foot fairly hard work. From May to September there is the added difficulty of a sun that beats down mercilessly and turns a tour of the island into a hunt for the next patch of shade. Most of the paths are asphalt and fairly monotonous to walk. By “monotonous” we do not mean that the surroundings are uninteresting, but you walk for quite a long time through the same kind of surroundings in which nothing happens, apart from the occasional rush of electric vehicles you have to get out of the way of. If you think of Veliki Brijun as a golf course with added facilities, charging around it in electric vehicles can be great fun.

One of the main attractions promoted on the island is Tito’s legacy. We will leave politics aside and try to experience the museum of Tito’s legacy through the eyes of the average foreign tourist.

In the museum you will see the testimony of an age that, from this distance, looks comical and grotesque. You will see jubilant Yugoslav youth and workers glorifying the character and works of the beloved leader in every way imaginable. At the same time the beloved leader is living the idea of class equality, modesty and other socialist principles to the full. And so Tito, a locksmith by trade, hunts, sings, plays the piano and takes an interest in every aspect of scientific, cultural and public life. Which just goes to show that the concept of lifelong learning is no invention of the modern age.

From the photographs on display, however, you get the impression that of all those activities his favourite was somehow driving giggling, scantily dressed starlets around in capitalist (American?!) cars and luxury vessels of various sizes, evidently with his wife’s wholehearted approval.

The second part of the museum looks grimmer still. On display here are numerous stuffed animals given to Tito by world statesmen. His passion for hunting and for collecting exotic animals was well known, so it became an established rule that when visiting Tito you presented him with some animal typical of the part of the world you came from. So here you can see the history of attempts to acclimatise animals from every climatic zone, from the polar regions to the tropics. Many tourists who do not grasp the context will no doubt find it interesting to look at all these dead animals. We did not. On many of the exhibits you can see that in life they suffered, were ill and undernourished, and died young.

Whether Tito’s parrot is proof of successful acclimatisation or whether she gets swapped for a new one every so often we do not know, but there she is – or at least her likeness – one of the island’s living constants.

Lest it all sound so bleak, part of the museum is devoted to Dr Robert Koch, one of the giants of world microbiology, who stayed on Brijuni on several occasions and helped in the fight against malaria, which at the time was a major problem on the islands.

It is also worth mentioning Paul Kupelwieser, the Austrian industrialist responsible for transforming Brijuni from malarial, marshy islands into a holiday oasis for the European elite.

In 1893 Paul Kupelwieser bought Brijuni, which were in a very poor state. With the help of Dr Robert Koch, one of the giants of world microbiology, he managed to solve the malaria problem, and with a great deal of help from Alojz Čufar, a forester from Labin, he set about transforming the island itself. Under his ownership a hotel settlement was built with five hotels, a heated swimming pool and supporting facilities. Forests and parks were laid out, archaeological sites tidied up, and a zoo and an ostrich farm established.

Although we are no admirers of the Austrian vision of the Mediterranean, it is a fact that Kupelwieser did a good deal to enrich this once-neglected island.

What did we like?

The Roman villa, the Byzantine castrum, the church of St. Mary and the quarry walkway are genuinely special and we would gladly see them again. Nearly all of these attractions lie south of the pier.

Although we prefer natural landscapes, this cultivated one has its charm too. The combination of broad meadows and islets of old pines is distinctive and particular to Brijuni. It is the image of Brijuni we all know.

The old olive tree stands just south of the pier and you cannot miss it. It is beautiful, but if you want the real experience on that theme you should make your way to the Lun olive groves.

Gradina is evidence of life on this island as far back as the Bronze Age. It lies south of the pier and north of Verige bay. Numerous archaeological finds have been made at the hillfort and around it.

The quarry walkway

Veliki Brijun has several quarries from which stone was taken for building throughout history. Right next to the pier, a walkway has been laid out through one of them. The walkway has been done up in a very interesting way and on hot days it makes an ideal place to rest in the shade.

Stone reliefs and sculptures in and around the walkway round out the experience and give it a special touch.

The Roman villa

The Roman villa in Verige bay is a magnificent building from the 1st century BC. Although today they are only a pale shadow of their former grandeur, its remains, perfectly incorporated into the landscape, are a true example of careful architectural thinking in antiquity. The stone remains still draw genuine lovers of aesthetics to this day, and they are a favourite backdrop for fashionable weddings and similar events.

The villa was paved in marble and richly decorated with mosaics and frescoes. Temples to the god Neptune and the goddess Venus were part of the complex, and on the northern side of the bay stood the baths, a fish pond and the working part of the estate. The shore in front of the villa was built of large stone blocks, and access to the harbour was controlled by a chain (verige) stretched between the opposite shores of the bay – which is where the bay gets its name.

If we picture the complex in its own age, without the surrounding settlements, modern traffic and noise, it was a true hedonist’s paradise.

The castrum

The castrum is another fascinating site. Its many layers are attested by finds from antiquity, Rome, the Goths, Byzantium, the Carolingians and all the way to Venice. It lies south of the pier in Dobrika bay on the western shore of the island. The site covers more than one hectare.

The castrum begins life as a lavish Roman villa. After the fall of the Roman Empire the villa is settled, rebuilt and takes on the outlines of a compact settlement. The settlement has all the buildings a local community needs to function. So here you can find the remains of a smithy, a room for processing olives, bread ovens, storerooms and a spinning room. The settlement later expanded, and for protection an enclosing wall 5 m high was raised.

The church of St. Mary

The church of St. Mary is another fascinating building on Veliki Brijun. It stands some hundred metres north of the castrum, whose inhabitants built it in the 6th century. There are other churches on Brijun, but this is the oldest and the most interesting architecturally. It is a fairly large building for its time. The three-aisled church, measuring 11 x 24 m, is surrounded by an early Christian cemetery, and the richness of its decoration is attested by the stone grilles that once guarded the window openings.

A Benedictine monastery was built alongside the basilica in the 9th century, and in the 13th century the whole site passed into the hands of the Templars. The church remained in use until the 18th century.

Conclusion

Brijuni (or at least Veliki Brijun) are different from other Croatian islands and certainly deserve a visit. They are a strange interleaving of the visions of paradise on earth held by different people and systems who, across many periods of history, kept doggedly trying to transform this island into something else.

We came away disappointed by a good many things, or simply did not like them, but there are also plenty of things we did like, and even loved.

Everyone will probably find something on Brijuni that delights them and that they will carry away as a fond memory of this unique place in the northern Adriatic.