I S L A N D H V A R

Even today you can hear the sound of the fight of Polifem and Odisey the Hero, in the secret caves of this island. Those people, lacking of knowledge and imagination, think is just a rain drop that constantly and almost secretly, take a piece of the cave stone away. On this island, the history is discovered in steps, like every guest is being told the part of the story that he/she is ready to hear. The ancient island has seen, experienced, bared and remembered all. The history has tought us that we do not to repeat our mistakes only when we are not ready for them. History is taken for granted, not respected enough, but is a teacher of living, reality of the present and unclear future. The island of Hvar is a history. History, here, at home, present in our ports, in our island. Because of it, Hvar is celebrated, proud; Hvar keeps history’s memories in every corner of its soil, wise stories of its people and richness of its tradition

For more than seven thousand years, feet of the islanders create the paths. Even the island itself, hardly remembers its initial inhabitants, that are only remebered by the caves of Polifem. Ilirians, Hvar’s first know inhabitants were pushed by Greeks into the hills of the island 400 years before the Christ. Kykladi islands, southeast of ancient Athens, island of Paros, brave people, ships and sea.. First, known Egeyian coasts, then a journey to the unknown Mediterranean,Ionic sea,roots of Odisej all the way to Hvar.It is not know why they stopped here, we can only guess how attracted and amazed they were with our island. They have replaced their homeland with a new one, with literature and tradition stoned their memories, building up an ancient Pharos colony in the solicity of the island field. From then, there has been a continuum of the existance of this town. Today it is Old city, tomorrow maybe Pharos again.

Recently, a Pharos-Paros-Pharos expedition was successfully relived and finished, where a ship after two milleniums of memories has traveled with gifts back home to Greece, taking with him a wine grape to plant it on Paros. Hosted by hundreds of boats, they sailed in the harbour, rebuilt lost attachments and full of impressions sailed back to Hvar. Paros islanders will again, on the roots of their ancestors, two milleniums later, sail towards the Old city, that awaits them excited, and which would, according to the whish of its inhabitants be recalled again to Pharos. Although Hvar carries slavic name, and its inhabitants have no connection with ancient Greeks, some profound and deep respect to ancestors, who created and left us something in tradition, makes people to remember them and take them away from forgeting.

Along with the Pharos settlement, which was an independent polis, there where also other colonies on this island. The most famous one was Dimos, at the place of today’s town of Hvar. After the Greek, there was a Roman era on the island. After Romans, there is a misterious era prior to Slavs’ arrival. Pirates from Neretva river were robbing the island since the seventh century, for almost 300 years. In that time period, the whole population became Slavic, and island of Hvar, by its name, culture and language becomes purely Croatian island. A the end of the first millenium, new eras follow, under domination of Venetians, Byzant, Napoleon, Austrian-hungarian empire and many known and less known nations that wanted this island to be theirs. Rich history left a multi-cultural mark on this island, gave it a spirit of uniqueness and beauty of differences.

The island of virgin beauty and Mediterranean charm. Although the beauty is a feeling that comes from within, there is a universal and undeniable purity of creation that every human being admires and respects, and in a way wants a part of it for himself.

Those who admire and respect Hvar, consider it ot be among the top ten most beautifull island in the world. We who like it, with no moral permitt to judge about it, bacuse what credibility judge has if he judges with heart and not cold mind, we, who live it and last, know for sure that they are right. He is situated like a boat in the heart of the Middle Dalmatian archipelago. Between the town of Hvar on the southwest, opposite of the pearl neck of islands, to romantic Sucuraj far on the east that looks on Biokovo and Rilic mountains, travels one of the longest roads on all Croatian island. This is a road of tremendous beauty, ruined at some places by bush fires of recent history. He is 626 m high, and from the Saint Nikola peak watches over the channel of Neretva, Korcula, Vis and Hvar. Ivanic Matul has brought up in 15th century church that he dedicated to Saint Nikola, a protector of the sailors and travelers. This church proudly stays on the top, over the edge. This Ivanic matul is the one who raised the ustanka of the peasants who spoke for equality with the land owners. It took a whole century to become publiclly know that Matija and peasants succeeded.

Island of wine grape and lavander. And while wine grape has treated other island pearls, the lavander is percived as an autohtonic and almost endemic to Hvar. Where ever you are, the profume of this godly oil evokes the pictures of the island and the rooms in the traditional old houses from our childhood. Lavandes is core and soul of Hvar. Lavander is Hvar.

Modern Hvar has grown up in its good part on the soil of marital tradition, not so exposed and know as of its western neighborhood, and no name heroes used to row for hours in boats to reach, for human hands, distant destination. Today, in the waters of Hvar, sailing is almost hedonistic, dreaming, not so surrviving, more in a whish for an unforgetable visual experience of Hvar’s bays.

Every micro world of the Adriatic islands has raised individuals, more talented and inspired from the rest of the inhabitants. In many of those places, these people were seen as weird and like people not bellonging there. That is a reason why many of the possible cultural successes and proofs are never to be discovered, and stay as a mistery. Through the history, Hvar has always been an oasis of culture. Architecture, theatre, sacral tradition and culture, novelists, writters, painters. This island is something heavenly, raised on the backs of the hard working peasants and fishermen, and sacred because of its numerous successfull and famous people that it gave to the world, daughters and sons of those same honest and proud fighters.

Tourists love this island. They call it their island, and in that way they get closer to it. Magnetically they return to it, becoming cheerfully a part of colorfull and multilingual landscape, that makes happy people and turist from the early spring time.

And life goes on and on, happy and beautifull, in this suniest corner of the Adriatic.