The Brijuni islands lie off the west coast of Istria, north of the entrance to Pula's harbour, across the narrow Fažana channel, and the Pula Tourist Board puts them about six kilometres from the city. The archipelago was declared a national park in 1983, and it carries an unusual mix of layers: a Bronze Age hill fort and Roman villas, an Austrian industrialist's health resort from the turn of the twentieth century, Tito's summer residence, a safari park, and a dinosaur footprint in the limestone by the harbour.
Most visitors see Brijuni National Park on a guided excursion to Veliki Brijun, the largest island, which starts and ends at the park's jetty in Fažana. This guide explains how that visit works, what it covers, how to explore on your own instead, and the rules on the islands.
The islands in brief
The park counts fourteen islands and islets. Its total area is 3,395 hectares, most of it sea; the islands themselves cover 743.30 hectares, with 46.8 kilometres of coastline between them. Veliki Brijun is the largest and the most visited, Mali Brijun the second largest, and the rest are islets such as Vanga, Galija and Vrsar.
The Fažana channel is only about twelve metres deep, and the park explains that ten thousand years ago the islands were part of the Istrian mainland. The stone is a white Cretaceous limestone that the Roman builders prized, and it was shipped from Brijuni's quarries to towns along the Adriatic. The climate is mild and humid, and the park records more than 400 plant species on the islands.
The present boundaries, taking in the land, the surrounding sea and the seabed, were set in 1999. Because the whole archipelago is protected, access is controlled, and for most visitors the only way in is the park's own boat.
Getting to Fažana
The boats leave from the jetty in the centre of Fažana, a fishing town about eight kilometres north-west of Pula. By car, the park says, you can drive all the way to Fažana, and the road signs from the Istrian Y show the direction and the distance to the islands. Pulapromet's suburban bus to Fažana starts in the centre of Pula, stopping by the Arena and at the bus station, which makes the trip easy without a car.
Allow time in Fažana before the boat. Tickets are bought at the park office at Brionska 10, next to the main pier, and the park is strict about boarding times.
Tickets and the boat
The park runs the crossing itself: the Brijuni National Park Boat sails from Fažana to the harbour of Veliki Brijun, and the crossing takes about fifteen minutes across the Fažana channel, with views of the islands and the south-west of Istria from the deck.
Tickets can be bought at the park office by the pier or in the park's online shop, and the park advises buying ahead to be sure of a tour in your preferred language. A ticket barcode on a phone is enough to board. Boarding is only possible at the time printed on the ticket, not earlier or later, and tickets cannot be moved to another time or refunded, so give yourself a margin for parking in Fažana in summer. Individual visitors can come back on any later boat.
The park is open every day of the year except in January and February, when visits are for groups by arrangement only, and it will only reschedule a tour if rough seas stop the boat sailing.
The guided tour of Veliki Brijun
The standard excursion lasts about three and a half hours. It includes the return boat, a guide, a one-hour ride on the tourist train, the safari park and the museum exhibitions, and the park runs it with guides in Croatian, English, German, Italian and Russian.
The train runs along the coast towards the north of the island, past the golf course, the castle and the early twentieth century buildings of the Kupelwieser era, with Mali Brijun and its Austro-Hungarian fort, Brioni Minor, in view across the water. In the north is the safari park, about nine hectares with around 80 plant-eating animals, mainly from Africa and Asia.
The return leg runs down the western side of the island, past the islets of Vrsar and Vanga, through holm oak and laurel woods with stone pines, cedars and sequoias, and past the Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff fort and the Roman villa at Verige Bay. The programme also takes in the exhibitions: copies of the frescoes and Glagolitic inscriptions of Istria and Kvarner in St German's church, a photography exhibition on Tito on Brijuni, an exhibition on Paul Kupelwieser and a natural history display. It ends at the Boathouse, the park's interpretation and education centre.
The safari park and its residents
The safari park's best-known resident is Lanka, an Indian elephant who arrived in 1972 as a gift from the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. The zebras came as gifts from the president of Guinea, Sékou Touré, in 1960 and 1961, and the zebu, the small sacred cattle of India, from Nehru in 1959. Llamas, ostriches and white peacocks complete the exotic side, and an ethno park recreates an Istrian farmstead with native sheep, donkeys and goats.
Injured sea turtles from the Pula Aquarium's rescue centre recover in the park during the warmer months. The park asks visitors not to feed the animals.
Tito's other famous companion is still on the islands. Koki, a yellow-crested cockatoo he gave to his granddaughter, has become one of the park's best-known characters, and the park says he talks, struts and sometimes offers to shake hands.
Exploring on your own
Instead of the guided tour, individual visitors can buy a Brijuni Pocket Guide ticket and explore Veliki Brijun with the park's mobile app, on foot or on a rented electric car, electric scooter or bicycle. Rentals are at the Sports Centre in the harbour area, run by a concession holder. The safari park is just over three kilometres from the harbour on foot, the park says.
Going independently suits anyone who wants more time at the Roman villa or the dinosaur footprints than the train tour allows, and it lets you choose your boat back. Take water: the park says the tap water is safe to drink and encourages refilling bottles, but there are no shops and no cash machines on Veliki Brijun.
Tours & Day Trips in Pula
Boat trips, day tours and skip-the-line tickets around the city and the Istrian coast, via GetYourGuide.
Brijuni Islands Cruise with Lunch and a Swim
A double-deck boat round the Brijuni islands, with lunch, drinks and a long swim stop at Fažana.
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Sunset Dolphin Watching Around Brijuni
An evening cruise off the Brijuni islands looking for wild dolphins, with drinks and an optional dinner.
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Brijuni by Boat with a Swim on St Jerolim
A traditional boat round the Brijuni islands, with dinner aboard and time to swim on St Jerolim.
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Small-Group Sailing with Snorkelling and SUP
A 13-metre yacht with no more than eight guests, with snorkelling, paddleboarding and cliff jumps.
Check availabilityRoman villas and the Byzantine castrum
Brijuni was a Roman country retreat, and the grandest remains are at Verige Bay, where a villa rustica begun in the first century BC reached its peak in the first century AD. The park describes a summer residence with two peristyles, temples to Neptune, Venus and the Capitoline Triad, baths, a fishpond and a promenade about a kilometre long linking the buildings along the shore. The bay takes its name from the chain, verige in Croatian, that once closed its harbour. The villa is part of the Roman Emperors' Route certified by the Council of Europe.
In Dobrika Bay, a Roman villa grew over the centuries into a walled settlement, the Byzantine castrum, which the park calls the richest site on the islands for its layers of history, with finds from the Roman Republic to the Venetian era. Close by, the church of St Mary, built in the fifth or sixth century, later belonged to the Templars.
Older still, the fortified Bronze Age settlement on the hill north of Verige Bay had three concentric walls and a labyrinth of entrances.
Dinosaur footprints
More than 200 dinosaur footprints have been found at four sites in the park, on Veliki Brijun and on the islets of Vanga, Galija and Vrsar. The park believes the animals walked here between 130 and 100 million years ago.
The first set of prints is the easiest to see: on landing in the harbour of Veliki Brijun, a three-toed print in a limestone block, probably left by a large meat-eating theropod, is visible from the quay. Visitors can see more prints at Cape Ploče and Cape Vrbanj, where a scientific reconstruction of a theropod gives a sense of the size of the animals.
Dinosaur prints are found on the mainland too. At the southern tip of Istria, the Cape Kamenjak protected landscape has a walking path on Cape Grakalovac to dinosaur tracks about 98 million years old, and roughly 150 more have been counted on the islet of Fenoliga, so the two parks make a natural pair.
Kupelwieser, Koch and the resort years
The islands owe their modern look to Paul Kupelwieser, an Austrian steel industrialist who bought them in 1893, when they were overgrown and riddled with malaria. He asked the German scientist Robert Koch for help, the disease was eradicated, and with the forester Alojz Čufar he turned the maquis into parks and woods.
Within about twenty years the harbour had a resort of five hotels and a swimming pool of heated seawater, a farm whose dairy produce and wine were sold in Vienna, and regular boats to Pula. The night train from Vienna brought guests to the jetty, and the islands became a summer and health resort for the European aristocracy. Kupelwieser built a family mausoleum on the island, though he died in Vienna.
Tito's islands
After the Second World War, Brijuni became the summer residence of Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia. He first visited in 1947, made the White Villa his official residence in 1953 and spent on average four months a year on the islands until his last stay in 1979. The park records that he received heads of state and government from some sixty countries here, and the 1956 meeting of Tito, Nasser and Nehru on Brijuni laid foundations for the Non-Aligned Movement.
The White Villa and the military buildings are still in use and are not open to the public, but the photography exhibition included in the tour tells the story of those years.
Rules on the islands
The park is a protected area, and its rules are enforced. Swimming is allowed only at the designated bathing area. Swimsuits are for the beach: they are not allowed on the boat, in the restaurants and cafés, in the museums or around the island. Dogs must be on a lead at all times and are not allowed on the tourist train, in the museums or in the safari park, and a ticket is charged for them.
Natural souvenirs stay where they are: the park asks visitors not to pick up peacock feathers, deer antlers or anything similar, and to tell a warden if something needs moving. The islands' old olive tree, which carbon dating in the 1960s put at about 1,600 years old, still bears fruit and is pressed for oil, and it is a fair picture of what protection has preserved here.
Boat trips around the islands
The park's excursion is the way onto Veliki Brijun, but private boats from Pula and Fažana sail around the archipelago too, usually combining the islands with swimming stops and dolphin watching. Check whether a trip lands on the islands or only sails past them, since the park's own boat is the way in for most visitors.
From Fažana, Rio Boat runs a 90-minute glass-bottomed boat panorama past Veliki and Mali Brijun and the Roman ruins at Verige Bay, and Koralj Boat, a converted Istrian fishing boat run by the same family for more than twenty years, runs two-hour dolphin cruises along the edge of the park.
From Pula harbour, Arena Boat Tours Pula sails to the waters of the national park with two motorboats adapted for wheelchair users and prams, and its crew watches the dolphins from a respectful distance without promising a sighting. Orion Travel runs a five-hour Brijuni cruise from Pula with lunch and a swim at Fažana, while Fissa-Brijuni runs a trip from the Port of Pula that lands on Veliki Brijun, with the tourist train, a guide, the Roman villa remains at Verige Bay, the safari park and the museum.
Planning the day
Book the excursion in your language ahead, arrive in Fažana with time to park and collect tickets, and dress for walking, with clothes over any swimwear for the boat. Bring water, and some cash, since there are no cash machines on the island. If you are staying on for the Pocket Guide route or a swim, check the times of the later boats before you go.
For more on Fažana, and on the rest of what this corner of Istria offers, the day trips guide and the where to stay guide pick up where this one ends.
