Half an hour down the road from Novalja sits a town that most people only glimpse from the car window on their way to the bridge. That is a mistake. Pag town is a Renaissance town built from scratch on a drawing board in 1443, wrapped around a salt basin that has been worked for centuries, and home to a lace tradition recognised by UNESCO. If you want one day away from the beach that gives you history, craft and a very good lunch, this is the one.
A Town Designed on Paper
Pag has moved home more than once. The settlement you walk through today was begun in 1443, when the Venetians commissioned Juraj Dalmatinac — the same master builder behind Sibenik’s cathedral — to lay out an entirely new town a short distance from the old one. He designed it the way Renaissance theorists said a town should be designed: main streets and cross streets meeting at right angles, four gates in the walls, and a proper square at the crossing point.
You feel it immediately. The lanes are straight, narrow and shaded, the stone is pale and sun-bleached, and every few turns you can see straight through to the sea at the end of the street. It takes maybe forty minutes to walk the whole historic core, but you will want longer.
The Church of St Mary and the Main Square
The square is dominated by the Church of St Mary (the Church of the Assumption). Dalmatinac took over supervision of the works in 1466; his pupils carried on after him and the building was not really finished until the early 16th century, with the stucco ceiling added during an 18th-century restoration.
Take a minute at the main portal before you go inside. In the lunette above the door, the Madonna spreads her cloak over the people of Pag — and the women beneath it are carved wearing the island’s traditional headdress and blouse. It is a small, very local detail on an otherwise formal facade, and it tells you a lot about how this town saw itself.
Paska Cipka: Lace on the UNESCO List
Lacemaking on Pag is documented as far back as the 15th century, and in 2009 the tradition was inscribed on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paska cipka is needlepoint lace: no machine, no shortcut, just a needle, thread and a geometric pattern held in the maker’s head. A single larger piece can take weeks.
On summer afternoons and evenings you will often find lacemakers sitting out on the square with their work in their laps — that is the real thing, and buying directly from them is the best souvenir on the island. For the background, the Pag Lace Gallery in town displays historic pieces and explains how the patterns developed.
The Salt Pans
The shallow bay behind the town is one of Europe’s oldest working salt fields. Salt was Pag’s original wealth — the reason Venice cared about this island in the first place — and Solana Pag still harvests it the slow way, letting sun and the bura wind do the work across a maze of basins, sluices and canals.
From the start of June, Solana Pag runs outdoor educational workshops: roughly an hour for the guided tour of the basins and their history, or about an hour and a half if you want the version where you actually rake salt yourself. Slots start early in the morning, which is the sensible time to be standing on a white salt flat in July. The Museum of Salt in town, housed in an old warehouse, holds a permanent exhibition of over a hundred objects — tools, photographs and salt products — and is a good rainy-day or too-hot-for-the-beach option. Opening hours are split between morning and evening, so check locally before you set off.
Getting There from Novalja
- By car: about 27 km along the main island road, roughly 30 minutes. Park outside the historic core — the old town is made for walking, not driving.
- By bus: direct buses run between Novalja and Pag town several times a day year-round, taking around 30 minutes. Tickets are inexpensive, in the region of €5 one way.
- Best time of day: go late afternoon. You dodge the worst of the heat, the stone turns gold around sunset, and you can finish with dinner on the riva.
Pair the trip with a stop for Pag cheese on the way back and you have covered the island’s three great exports in a single afternoon: salt, lace and sheep. That is a good day out by anyone’s standards.
