Central Istria is a landscape of round hills with a village on top of each one. They were built up there for defence, they emptied in the twentieth century, and several of them have been repopulated by artists, musicians and people running small hotels. Two of them are worth a whole afternoon.
Motovun
The famous one, on a hill above the Mirna valley with double walls and a complete circuit you can walk in twenty minutes. From the ramparts you look over the truffle forest and the vineyards on the surrounding slopes.
Cars stop below and you walk the last stretch up, which is steeper than it looks. There is a lift-and-shuttle arrangement in season for those who need it. The village itself is one square, a church, a few restaurants and the walls — small, and the point is the view and the walk.
It hosts a film festival at the end of July, which is the one week it is genuinely crowded.
Grožnjan
Smaller, quieter and, to many people, the better of the two. Nearly abandoned by the 1960s, then given over to artists; the ground floors of the stone houses are studios and galleries, and in summer it fills with music students.
There is no view to match Motovun's but there is more to walk into. Grožnjan is a village to wander rather than a viewpoint to reach.
Oprtalj, Hum, Buzet
Oprtalj sits across the valley from Motovun and gets a fraction of the visitors, which is its main attraction. Hum bills itself as the smallest town in the world — about twenty inhabitants, two streets, and a genuine curiosity rather than a tourist trap. Buzet is larger and a working town, at the head of the truffle valley.
The road between them, the Parenzana, was once a narrow-gauge railway; long sections are now a walking and cycling route through tunnels and over viaducts, and it is the best way to see this landscape slowly.
Where to stay
Apartment Gordana
Where to stay
Villa Karla
Go late in the day
These are stone villages on exposed hilltops. At two in the afternoon in August they are hot and hard work; at six they are the best place in Istria. The light on the valleys in the last hour before sunset is the reason people photograph this region.
Two villages in an afternoon is the sensible maximum. Three is a driving day.
The roads
Narrow, winding and slow — allow more time than the map suggests. Every village has parking below the walls and none of it is adequate in high season; go early or go late.
From the east coast it is about an hour to Motovun, from Pula a little more. It is a day out, not an excursion between beaches.
