Šibenik

Šibenik is unusual on the Dalmatian coast: it was not founded by Greeks, Illyrians or Romans but grew up as a Croatian fortress, probably in the 9th century, on the hill now crowned by St Michael's Fortress. It first appears in a charter issued by King Petar Krešimir IV at Christmas 1066, which is why it is called Krešimir's town. Venice, Byzantium and Hungary fought over it for the next century; it gained town status in the 12th century and, after a long struggle with Trogir, its own diocese in 1298.

Venice took the city in 1412 after a three-year war and made it the seat of the Adriatic salt monopoly. Facing the Ottomans just inland, Šibenik built the Cathedral of St James between 1431 and 1536 and ringed itself with forts: St Nicholas at the harbour entrance in the 16th century, then St John and Barone in 1646, raised by the townspeople in 58 days each before an Ottoman army besieged the city during the Cretan War. Until the 17th-century plague it was the largest city on the eastern Adriatic coast.

Austrian rule followed Venice's fall in 1797. Ante Šupuk, elected in 1872 as the first Croat mayor, modernised the city, and on 28 August 1895 Šibenik became the first city in the world to light its streets with alternating current, from the Jaruga plant on the Krka. Italy occupied the city after the First World War and again from 1941 to 1943. In September 1991 it was attacked for six days, damaging the cathedral dome, and was defended; the region was retaken in August 1995. The industry built in the 20th century largely closed afterwards.

The cathedral is the city's pride: a building raised entirely of stone, without mortar or wood, whose frieze of more than 70 carved heads is considered a set of portraits of people from Dalmatia of its time. Šibenik also remembers Faust Vrančić, the bishop and inventor born here in 1551 and credited with one of the earliest parachute designs.

Music and theatre run through the summer. The International Children's Festival, held since 1958, fills the theatre and squares with young performers from around the world; the Dalmatian Chanson Evenings bring popular song in August; and the stage inside St Michael's Fortress hosts international artists. The theatre itself, built by the townspeople in 1870 without public money, was damaged in 1991 and has been restored. Klapa singing is part of local life, and the orange-and-black Šibenik cap is the city's emblem.

Sport is taken seriously. Šibenik is the hometown of the basketball player Dražen Petrović, one of Europe's greatest players, and of a long line of water polo players and footballers, and local clubs play at Šubićevac and in the city's pools. Like the rest of Dalmatia, the city keeps a slow rhythm of coffee and the evening walk along the riva.

At the 2021 census the urban settlement had 31,115 people and the wider city 42,599, making it the third-largest town in Dalmatia and the seat of Šibenik-Knin County. Most residents live in the districts that climb the hills behind the old town and spread along the bay, and the island of Krapanj, among others, belongs to the city.

Until the 1980s Šibenik was a strong industrial centre: the TEF and TLM factories and its port was among the largest in Yugoslavia. TEF closed in the 1990s and its works were removed, and the war damaged TLM. Today the city is the county's administrative, educational and economic centre, and tourism draws on the World Heritage cathedral and fortress and on Krka just upstream.

The old town fills with visitors in summer and empties in winter, when the city returns to its residents. Island families move between Šibenik and their houses on Zlarin, whose population rises several times over from March to October. The city has no airport of its own, and plans for one in the hinterland have been approved but not built.

Šibenik eats in the Dalmatian way. Fish is grilled, chard, blitva, is one of the commonest ingredients of Dalmatian cooking, and brudet, a stew of several kinds of fish, is eaten with polenta. From the hinterland comes pršut, the dry-cured ham that in Dalmatia is smoked before the bura dries it, and Drniš pršut, from inland of Šibenik, is considered one of the finest.

The konobas of the old town lanes serve this everyday Dalmatian cooking, and the surrounding country has long been given over to vineyards and olive groves.

Wine comes from the coast around the city: Babić, a red grape grown around Šibenik and on the historic stone terraces of Primošten just to the south, is the local grape, grown in northern Dalmatia for hundreds of years. Prošek is the sweet dessert wine, travarica the herb brandy, and wine cut with still water, bevanda, is drunk with meals.