Activities

Activities around Korcula

  • sightseeing of the Korcula Old Town + visiting main Panorama viewpoints
  • eating and drinking in numerous restaurants, konobas and cafe’s
  • Moreska – sword dance: Performances of Korcula’s famous folk dance, the Moreška, take place outside the main gate to the old town in summer every Thursday evening (tickets 50kn). This frantic, sword-based dance is the story of a conflict between the Christians (in red) and the Moors (in black): the heroine, Bula, is kidnapped by the evil foreign king and his army, and her betrothed tries to win her back in a ritualized sword fight which takes place within a shifting circle of dancers.
  • concerts in Cathedral Sveti Marko – info here
  • sunbathing and swimming – Your best bet for beaches is to head off by water taxi from the old harbour to one of the Skoji islands just offshore. The largest and nearest of these is Badija, where there are some secluded rocky beaches, a couple of snack bars and a naturist section. There’s also a sandy beach just beyond the village of Lumbarda, 8km south of Korcula (reached by hourly bus in the summer).
  • cycling, sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, canoeing – there are several agencies that rent bicycles, scooters, kayaks etc to further explore surroundings.
  • walking and hiking : Sveti Ilija Mountain, Zrnovo, Defora and Lumbarda walks,
  • day trips to Dubrovnik, National Park Mljet, Islands in Korcula Archipelago Skoji: Badija, Vrnik..
  • sunbathing and swimming
  • cycling, sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, canoeing …
  • walking and hiking
  • KPK – Korcula swimming and water polo club – visit their daily training sessions as well as popular water polo matches.

Excursions around Korcula

More than 1,100 islands lie off the coast of Croatia, and for many visitors the crown jewel of this Adriatic archipelago is Korcula. The island, along with the rest of the isles in the Dalmatian chain, managed to escape the violence of the sad and lengthy conflict that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, and today travelers are once again returning to rediscover Korcula’s charms.

Likely as not, they begin in Korcula town, where a network of narrow, cobbled streets dating to the 8th-century line this walled medieval fortress. Not surprisingly, here at the edge of the Mediterranean, Greeks were the island’s earliest settlers. But it was the Venetians who left a lasting stamp in the old town, with its own St. Mark’s Cathedral – a perfect setting for the carnival celebrations and masked balls held from January to Ash Wednesday.

Much of the island outside the town is covered with pine forest, and while beaches are not the main attraction here, there is a nice sandy strand at Lumbarda, at the southeastern end of the island. Sailors, meanwhile, love these islands, where the winds are steady and anchorages plentiful. Some of them say the islands here remind them of Greece, say 30 or 40 years ago…