Hear the symphony of the sea on the Dalmatian coast.

I had a faint expectation of seeing Dalmatians on the Dalmatian coast. It’s cliché, I know, so I dared not mention it to anyone and certainly not to the woman serving me coffee on Trg Sv.Stosije square in Zadar.  

She was courteous and beautiful but with her heavy make-up and teased black hair, she resembled Cruella de Vil from  Disney’s “One Hundred and One Dalmations” and appeared as though she’d moved from night into morning on just a nap.

The history of the city can be seen in Trg Sv.Stosije square.

Zadar, located on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, is that kind of place. Everyone’s laid back. One might call Zadar staid and sedate if only visited in the daytime.

But with thousands of students and a pleasant, cool sea breeze in the evening, the city really comes alive after 10 p.m.

“Ciao!” I hear an elderly man beckon across the market. The Italian influence is still felt in Dalmatia but especially among the older generation. From 1921 until WWII, most of the Adriatic coast was in Italian hands.

“Dober vecer,” answers another, good evening, before they shake hands.

“Dober vecer” was Ante’s greeting to us, too, when he collected guests for his walking tour. We joined him through the maze of Zadar’s streets.
 
Zadar is a compact city, with its historic core spread out on a peninsula. Ante tells of WWII bombings and the reconstruction under communism. He admits it’s easy for younger Croats like him to talk about Tito since few really remember what life was like under the dictator of former Yugoslavia, which Zadar was then part of.  

However, they’re left with his legacy of lethargy. Tito apparently felt little affinity with Zadar and some say he erected ugly post-war buildings on purpose. To be fair, many European cities have those scars, reflecting a time when planners enforced order by wiping away history’s messiness.

Today, Zadar is anything but a mess. The various layers of its history are cleaned up and distinctly visible. The main Forum square has proud Roman columns, a robust Romanesque church, Renaissance facades and a ’60s office building — the strictness of which is actually a perfect complement to the roundness of Romanesque Saint Donat.

Terrace cafés serving maraschinos, a cherry liqueur produced in Zadar since the 16th century, provide great views onto the assembled architectural treasures. The stones of the monuments are like buttermilk, creamy in color with a translucent sheen.