Largest of the Dalmatian islands and the easiest to reach from Split, Brač has a long history of tourism but has never quite lost its relaxing bucolic feel. The heavily indented coast is sprinkled with fishing ports and pebbly beaches, including the famously dramatic strand at Zlatni rat. Hotel settlements sit at a respectable distance from quaint picturesque harbour towns like Supetar and Bol, while the interior of the island, covered in maquis, olive groves and crumbling dry stone walls, offers stark Mediterranean beauty.

Supetar

Main port for car ferries driving from Split, Supetar is a popular family resort grouped around a picturesque harbour. Despite the presence of a sizeable hotel settlement on its western outskirts, Supetar still retains the feel of a fishing port, with a pleasing if undramatic huddle of low-rise buildings grouped around a cute parish church. The town does boast a spectacular semicircle of shingle beach, lining a protected shallow bay just west of town. Looming above cypress trees north of the beach is the bulbous dome of the Petrinović mausoleum, designed for a wealthy local family by sculptor Toma Rosandić in the 1920s. The mausoleum was crafted out of Brač’s famous milky-white marble, which is quarried east of Supetar in the slopes around Pučišća.

Bol