Most visitors who come to Novalja head straight for the beaches and the beat of Zrće. But underneath the town’s streets runs something few tourists ever hear about: a hand-carved Roman tunnel over a kilometre long, dug through solid rock nearly two thousand years ago. Locals call it Talijanova buža — the “Italian’s Hole” — and it is one of the best-preserved pieces of Roman engineering on the entire Adriatic coast.
Cissa Portunata: Novalja’s Roman Roots
In Roman times, the northern part of Pag island was home to a settlement called Cissa Portunata, whose name lived on as the name of the whole island until the 14th century. Linguists have traced “Cissa” to the modern cove of Caska, just south of Novalja, where traces of Roman-era life are still scattered along the shore. Novalja itself takes its name from the Latin navalia — a place for repairing and sheltering ships — hinting at how important this stretch of coast, with its cluster of natural harbours at Stara Novalja, Novalja and Caska, once was to Roman shipping routes across the Adriatic.
A Tunnel Carved by Hand
The aqueduct itself is a subterranean channel roughly 1,050 metres long, cut entirely by hand into live rock beneath the Novalja field. It is remarkably narrow — about 60 centimetres wide on average — while its height varies between roughly 1 and 2.3 metres depending on the stretch. Archaeologists date its construction to the 1st century AD, based on a Roman brick stamped “AFAESONIAF”, pointing to a brickmaker named Aulus Faesonius who ran a brickyard somewhere in the northern Adriatic at the time.
Nine vertical shafts, known locally as odiha, were sunk along its length, originally to help construction crews work the tunnel from multiple points and later used for maintenance access — you can still see the worn footholds carved into their walls. The tallest shaft, on the summit of Močišćak hill, drops some 44 metres. The aqueduct carried water from the Novalja field down to the coast, supplying the town’s households, its ceramic workshops and dye houses, and likely ships anchoring in the harbour. Wood used to shore up a collapsing section shows the tunnel was still in active use in the early 3rd century AD.
Lost, Then Found by Accident
Over the centuries, the aqueduct’s existence faded from memory entirely — until, as local legend has it, a child fell through a hole in the ground near Lunjsko put in the 19th century. When locals widened the opening to pull the child out, they uncovered the long-forgotten underground channel. Word spread, and fantastical stories briefly circulated about what the tunnel might be, before it was correctly identified as a Roman aqueduct and given its enduring nickname. The earliest written record of the find is a sketch and description made in 1853 by Mijat Sabljar, a commissioner of the National Museum in Zagreb, in a notebook that survives to this day.
A Brief Second Life
The tunnel’s usefulness wasn’t entirely finished. In the early 20th century, facing a genuine water shortage, the Austro-Hungarian administration tried to put the ancient channel back to work, pumping water from the Škopalj spring uphill into a cistern with a windmill, then feeding it through the old Roman tunnel to three public fountains in town. The system was ceremonially switched on in 1912 — only to be abandoned six years later with the outbreak of the First World War. Later attempts to revive it followed under Italian administration in 1920, with a diesel engine replacing the windmills in 1927, and one final push with electric pumps in 1947. None lasted. In 2012, Talijanova buža was formally inscribed on Croatia’s register of protected cultural goods, cementing its status as a monument rather than infrastructure.
Visiting Talijanova Buža Today
The entrance to the aqueduct sits inside the Novalja Town Museum, right in the centre of town, and museum staff provide the safety equipment needed to go inside — you can’t enter independently. It’s an easy stop to combine with a wander through Novalja’s old town, and it gives a completely different picture of the place than the beach clubs of Zrće: a reminder that people have been living, trading and engineering their way around this stretch of coast for close to two thousand years. If you’re curious about where the Roman-era name of the island came from, or simply want an hour of shade and history on a hot afternoon, it’s well worth the detour.