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About the project

After last night's rain
tonight the bura wind floated in
the islands, the reefs of Kornati
sunlit, this morning they came to rest
right by our door.

T. Cukrov, “Posli kiše” (After the Rain)

Murter, that unusual jewel bathed by the sea, adorned with many islands, bound by karst and blessed with the resilience of its island people, has been building its history for thousands of years. From prehistory, when the Liburnians, sovereign rulers of the Adriatic, built their port town of Colentum here, through antiquity, when Colentum was settled by the Romans, right up to the present day, the island of Murter has been continuously inhabited. The sea has always shaped the history of the island. It provided livelihood and protection, while at the same time limiting and shaping the islanders' way of life. Join us on a walk through Murter's history and heritage and discover the island's most beautiful views “captured” in the frame.

Graphic panels

The ancient port of Colentum

If we could travel back in time to the 1st century BC and look towards the sea from this spot, the view would be very different. We would see the bustling ancient port of Colentum and the settlement that grew up around it. The port of ancient Colentum was located on the north-western side of the Gradina peninsula. It lay in a very sheltered bay, closed off on one side by the Gradina peninsula and on the other by the islets of Mali and Veli Vinik and Tegina. The 1st century BC is considered the period of its busiest traffic.

The waters of Murter

An authentic Mediterranean filigree of sea and islets peeking out of the blue like pearls can be seen all along the coast of Murter. The Municipality of Murter-Kornati is blessed with more than 160 islands and a coastline almost 400 kilometres long, making it the most indented municipality in the entire Mediterranean.

Among Murter's islands, the Kornati archipelago, which is protected as a National Park, is particularly important. Also notable is the Žut-Sit island group, parts of which have been declared a protected natural area. All these pearls of Murter are washed by the capricious Murter Sea, a marine area of 210 square kilometres bounded by the mainland, the Kornati and the Šibenik islands of Kaprije and Žirje. This sea is exposed to strong winds, sudden changes of wind and strong currents, so sailors in its waters must always be on their guard.

Modrave

Olive trees have been cultivated in the Murter area since antiquity. Roman sources record that the best olive oil came from Liburnia, precisely from the area of the former Liburnian towns, including Colentum, today's Murter.

The first written record of olive groves in the Murter area dates from 1386. As the population of the island of Murter grew, the need arose to expand holdings to overseas areas, above all to the Kornati and Modrave.

When the people of Murter came to Modrave in the 17th century, they began creating one of the largest olive groves in the Mediterranean, covering an area along the sea about 11 kilometres long and up to three kilometres wide.

The biggest step forward in the development of olive growing on Murter was the construction of the local oil mill. According to folk tradition, it was built by none other than the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Franz Joseph I. As the story goes, the heir to the throne took shelter from a storm in one of the coves of the Kornati and then ended up as a guest of the people of Murter. This unusual traveller, whose identity the locals did not recognise, was served a meal seasoned with olive oil. Murter's “liquid gold” and the islanders' hospitality so delighted him that in 1910 he financed the construction of a state-of-the-art oil mill. Modrave olive oil has always been of high quality. It was served at the imperial court in Vienna, and numerous awards and prizes from various world exhibitions confirmed its quality.

Then as now, olive growing is the most developed branch of agriculture in the Municipality of Murter-Kornati, and Modrave oil has become a symbol of investing in olive growing to create prosperity on the island.

• Venetian shipowners regularly bought the prized island oil from the people of Murter. One historical record mentions the purchase of 124 barrels of oil and 520 cheeses.
• The importance of olive oil as a foodstuff throughout history is also shown by Napoleon's decree that every man had to plant around a hundred olive trees before marrying.

Traditional wooden boatbuilding

Their overseas holdings on the Kornati and in Modrave forced the people of Murter to change their way of life. They had to master seafaring skills and knowledge and build an island fleet.

Besides travelling to their holdings, boats were used to go to the towns of Šibenik and Zadar, where administrative matters were dealt with, crops were sold and supplies were bought. Because of this way of life, a boat became an essential part of every household. Murter's boats were first built by shipwrights from Šibenik. However, in the mid-18th century the Filipi family of shipwrights came to Betina from Korčula and opened the first shipyard on the island. These first Betina shipwrights, together with the Uroda family of shipwrights, trained a solid team of master craftsmen capable of building all kinds of small and medium-sized boats. Betina became the centre of wooden boatbuilding, and its shipwrights supplied wooden boats to the whole of northern Dalmatia. The boatbuilding tradition on the island of Murter is preserved to this day. Murter itself has several well-known shipyards specialising in wooden boatbuilding, but Betina remains the most famous for its boatbuilding skill.

The Murter-Betina field

From the time the villages were formed in the 14th and 15th centuries, the inhabitants of the island of Murter were peasants, farmers and herders. Most of the island's agricultural activity took place in the Murter-Betina field in the north-eastern part of the island. This unusual landform, normally found only on the mainland, was historically the main source of food for the people of Murter. The limestone plateau filled with a thick layer of red soil has always been suitable for growing vegetables and grapevines. In addition, the abundance of water in the field made it possible to grow vegetables even in the dry part of the year.

The agricultural activities of the island of Murter can be traced through land concession contracts in the Murter-Betina field dating back to the 15th century. At that time the Šibenik commune granted land in the field to the Linjičić, Mihetić and Simeonić families, who paid the Šibenik treasury a symbolic land tax of 4 soldi per gonjaj for it. This most fertile zone of the island was used to the full for farming throughout history, while the rest of the land is mostly covered with maquis because of the lack of fertile soil. Although the islanders extended their holdings to the neighbouring islands out of necessity, the Murter-Betina field is still a symbol of the survival of this region through the centuries.

The seven hills of Murter

The seven hills of Murter – Raduč, Gradina, Veli vrh, Mali and Veliki Vršak, Vršina and Crnikovac – are the age-old guardians of Murter. They watch over the village nestled in the safety of the bay enclosed by the hills. Since the 18th century, the little church of St Roch has welcomed travellers at the top of Vršina hill above the centre of Murter. The church was built in 1760 by the people of Murter as a votive offering to the saint who saved them from the plague.

During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, construction began on Raduč hill of a military complex consisting of a headquarters building, a lookout tower, several smaller buildings and a system of tunnels with three entrances. The tunnels, cut into the bedrock in the 1930s with dynamite and large sledgehammers, end with two coastal artillery batteries, a machine-gun nest, a lookout post and a trench for semicircular defence.

The Liburnian and Roman settlement of Colentum was spread across Gradina hill, where this educational trail is located. At the very top of Gradina hill, remains of Roman and Liburnian walls, mortar and roof tiles can still be seen today. Although they have not been researched, all these finds, as well as researchers' reports, point to the existence of an acropolis here. Today the top of Gradina can be reached by a fairly well-maintained goat track, and there is a cross at the very top.

Kornati

Most of the Murter archipelago is made up of the Kornati islands, a stone labyrinth of 89 islands, islets and reefs, a natural phenomenon that has been declared a National Park for its exceptional beauty. The Kornati are entirely privately owned. Ninety percent of the owners are inhabitants of the island of Murter. At the end of the 19th century these Dalmatian peasants bought the islands from the nobility and enclosed their land with dry-stone walls. The island of Kornat alone has about 260 kilometres of dry-stone walls, and the whole National Park an impressive 330 kilometres.

Life on the Kornati has always been a struggle for survival. With their persistence to survive, people changed the appearance of the islands. Today's barren islands, dotted only with “green oases” of vegetation, are not what they looked like in ancient times. The sparse greenery of the rocky pastures fed sheep, and thousands of years of use of these areas led to deforestation and the transformation of the islands into rocky ground.

The view of the Kornati is perhaps most impressive on the open-sea side of the islands, where cliffs rise up to 80 metres above the sea. But no less impressive are the horizontal layers of some islands, such as Mali Šilo. The layers look like neatly stacked stone steps “climbing” to the top of the island.

The Roman road

The discovery of a town street is important for the urban layout of Colentum. The route of this street lies below this spot and is still clearly visible today. It runs south of the fence of the cemetery of Our Lady of Gradina. Two main buildings stood south and north of the street, entered through a courtyard enclosed by a high wall on the street side. Besides the ground-floor rooms, these buildings also had rooms on an upper floor. Fragments of frescoes were found in the buildings. The only better-preserved mosaics were found in the northern building.

These mosaics are believed to date from earlier centuries and were probably made by a school/workshop based in Salona. Based on the dating of pottery finds, it was concluded that the building was erected as early as the Augustan period and was continuously in use until the first half of the 2nd century, when changes took place. According to the archaeologists, the houses were destroyed in an earthquake. This was followed by the rebuilding of the settlement, primarily along the coast, while the higher parts of Gradina were probably abandoned and only resettled in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.