Istria, a heart-shaped peninsula located in the northern Adriatic, is the most visited region in Croatia. Istria is easily accessible by car from many European countries. Unlike the rest of Croatian coast, here you’ll find plenty of things to do all year around. This region is very popular among foodies, cyclists, and history aficionados.

Istria gets its name from the Histri, an Illyrian tribe that ruled the region before succumbing to the Romans in the second century BC. The invaders left a profound mark on the area, building farms and villas, and turning Pula into a major urban centre. Slav tribes began settling the peninsula from the seventh century onwards, driving the original Romanized inhabitants of the peninsula towards the coastal towns or into the hills.

Coastal and inland Istria began to follow divergent courses as the Middle Ages progressed. The coastal towns adopted Venetian suzerainty from the thirteenth century onwards, while the rest of the peninsula came under Habsburg control. The fall of Venice in 1797 left the Austrians in charge of the whole of Istria. They confirmed Italian as the official local language, even though Croats outnumbered Italians by more than two to one. Istria received a degree of autonomy in 1861, but only the property-owning classes were allowed to vote, thereby excluding many Croats and perpetuating the Italian-speaking community’s domination of Istrian politics.

Austrian rule ended in 1918, when Italy – already promised Istria by Britain as an inducement to enter World War I – occupied the whole peninsula. Following Mussolini’s rise to power in October 1922, the Croatian language was banished from public life, and Slav surnames were changed into their Italian equivalents. During World War II, however, opposition to fascism united Italians and Croats alike, and Tito’s Partisan movement in Istria was a genuinely multinational affair, although this didn’t prevent outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence. The atrocities committed against Croats during the Fascist period were avenged indiscriminately by the Partisans, and the foibe of Istria – limestone pits into which bodies were thrown – still evoke painful memories for Italians to this day.

After 1945 Istria became the subject of bitter wrangling between Yugoslavia and Italy, with the Yugoslavs ultimately being awarded the whole of the peninsula. Despite promising all nationalities full rights after 1945, the Yugoslav authorities actively pressured Istria’s Italians into leaving, and the region suffered serious depopulation as thousands fled. In response, the Yugoslav government encouraged emigration to Istria from the rest of the country, and today there are a fair number of Serbs, Macedonians, Albanians and Bosnians in Istria, many of whom were attracted to the coast by the tourist industry, which took off in the 1960s and has never looked back.

Geographically distant from the main flashpoints of the Serb-Croat conflict, Istria entered the twenty-first century more cosmopolitan, more prosperous and more self-confident than any other region of the country. With locals tending to regard Zagreb as the centre of a tax-hungry state, Istrian particularism is a major political force, with the Istrian Democratic Party (Istarska demokratska stranka, or IDS) consistently winning the lion’s share of the local vote.

One consequence of Istria’s newfound sense of identity has been a reassessment of its often traumatic relationship with Italy, and a positive new attitude towards its cultural and linguistic ties with that country. Bilingual road signs and public notices have gone up all over the place, and the region’s Italian-language schools – increasingly popular with cosmopolitan Croatian parents – are enjoying a new lease of life.