Istria Vacation Packages & Tours

Welcome to Istria

Istria is where Croatia shades into something closer to northern Italy — and not just in geography. The hilltop towns, the truffle forests, the Malvazija wine, the slow lunches that stretch into the afternoon: this is a peninsula that takes food and landscape seriously, and rewards travelers who do the same. The coast gets most of the attention, and Rovinj deserves it. Its Venetian-era houses stack up from the harbor in tightly packed rows of terracotta and ochre, the streets so narrow between them that the upper floors almost touch. The Church of St. Euphemia crowns the hilltop above, visible from the water long before you arrive. At the southern tip of the peninsula, Pula’s Roman amphitheater dates to the 1st Century AD and seats 20,000 — still used today for concerts and the Pula Film Festival each summer.

But Istria’s interior is where the peninsula earns its reputation. Motovun sits on a hilltop above the Mirna River Valley, its medieval walls rising from vineyards that produce some of the region’s best Malvazija. In autumn, the forests below are hunted for both black and white truffles — Istria is one of the few places in the world that produces both, and a truffle hunt followed by lunch in a farmhouse kitchen is the kind of experience that doesn’t need much embellishment. Grožnjan, further north, was virtually abandoned after the Second World War until artists moved in during the 1960s. More than 20 galleries now fill its stone buildings, and in July the village hosts a jazz festival.