Poreč Harbour & Sveti Nikola Island

The harbour has been Poreč’s front door since Roman Parentium shipped amphorae of Istrian oil and wine across the northern Adriatic. The round towers at the harbour mouth — the North Tower and the Round Tower — date from the 15th century, when Venetian Poreč ringed the peninsula with walls against pirate raids. Sveti Nikola island itself carried a monastery from the middle ages, then a nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian fortress, and finally one of Istria’s first resort hotels in 1910 — the island has been Poreč’s swimming hole for over a century.