Istria is the large triangular peninsula at the northern end of the Croatian Adriatic — a landscape of small hill towns, vineyards, oak forest, and a 450-kilometre indented coastline. It is the closest piece of Croatia to Italy, and the relationship shows: bilingual road signs, Italianate cuisine, and a string of Venetian-era towns along the western coast.
The west coast holds most of the visitor destinations. Pula at the southern tip has a complete Roman amphitheatre that still hosts summer concerts. North along the coast are the Venetian harbours of Rovinj — the photogenic baroque peninsula — and Poreč, whose 6th-century Euphrasian Basilica is a UNESCO site for its golden Byzantine mosaics. Further north sit Umag, Novigrad, and Fažana, the gateway to the Brijuni Islands — Tito's former private island playground, now a national park.
The interior is quieter and very rewarding. Walled hill towns sit on isolated ridges: Motovun above the truffle forests of the Mirna valley, the smaller Žminj, the artists' village of Grožnjan, and Buzet. The Mirna and Raša valleys are serious wine country — dry, mineral Malvazija Istarska is the white to look for, dark and tart Teran the red — with dozens of tasting rooms clustered around Buzet and Motovun (Kabola, Kozlović, Coronica, Matošević, and Damjanić are all worth seeking out). The same oak forests around Motovun produce some of Europe's best truffle hunting: white truffles from late September to January (the world-record specimen, 1.31 kg, was dug up here in 1999), black truffles year-round, and several local outfits run guided hunts with trained dogs. Pazin, Istria's inland regional centre, guards an extraordinary karst gorge that swallows its river.
For travellers, Istria works either as a beach base on the coast — Rovinj and Poreč are the obvious choices — or as a slower exploration of the wine villages, hill towns, and gastronomic stops in the interior. It is one of the most consistently rewarding parts of Croatia, less overwhelmed than Dalmatia and easier to reach than the islands.
