UNESCO Adds Two More Croatian Sites to Heritage List

Two more Croatian sites join UNESCO's World Heritage list in July, one from the Adriatic coastal town of Zadar and the other from the coastal town of Sibenik.

One is the defensive walls surrounding Zadar. These were built between the 15th and 17th century by Venice, which governed the area from the 13th century onwards, after it sacked and virtually destroyed the town with the help of French Crusaders.

Nowadays the old walls still stand on the landward side of Zadar's Old Town - located on a small peninsula - and by the harbour.

UNESCO has also included the 16th-century defensive fortress of St Nicholas, located on the isle of Ljuljevac, on the mouth of a narrow sea channel leading towards Sibenik.

The fortress, which almost completely covers the isle, has a specific triangular shape, making it an attractive feature for aerial photos. The fortress was also built by Venice, to protect Sibenik and nearby Skradin from raids by Ottoman Turks.

Both Zadar and Sibenik have become popular tourist hubs on the Croatian Adriatic coast - with over 438,000 tourists visiting Zadar and over 290,000 in Sibenik in 2016.

Sibenik is already home to another UNESCO World Heritage site, the Cathedral of St James, built in the 15th and 16th century by Italian and Croatian architects and sculptors.

Zadar is meanwhile famous for its Roman Forum, a square built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus and for a rare 9th-century church, the pre-Romanesque Church of St Donatus located on the square.

The country of 4.2 million inhabitants and 56,000 square kilometres now has ten sites on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

The list mainly includes other localities on the coast, such as the medieval Old Town of Dubrovnik, the palace of the...