Old Town Field Vrbanj Hvar
Vrbanj, Dol, Svirce, Vrisnik and Pitve, those are villages by the edges of the Old Town Field (Starogradsko polje) that were inhabited in the early Middle Ages. How these villages live today, you can taste if you rent an accommodation in Vrbanj or elsewhere in Hvar and you decide to visit this unique place on the island. The shore of the island, tensed and pulsating in the heart of the summer, withdraws here, calms down and get silent before the millennia of life that is settled in the black fertile land of Field. In the west, the plain rises to Stari Grad (Old City), the ancient Faros, the place where from it originates. It is precisely the antique that marked this landscape, and field fragmentation has today been recognized as one of the great works of Greek culture in the Mediterranean. The entire Old Town Field is today the archaeological zone due to the incredible fact that the land structure of the field divisions remained untouched over a period of 2400 years. The land that has been divided and cut elsewhere into smaller and smaller parts, here it did not took anything away from the basic partition of the parcel. The Old Town Field has as many as 120 archaeological sites, and the soil layers guard the mysteries of farmers who lived in the prehistoric and medieval times here. The field enjoys the protection of many institutions, not only for its archaeological or architectural value. All dry terraces, vineyards and late antique and old Croatian churches in the field are just a piece of mosaic that adorns the cultural landscape, whose protection is the primary one here. Olive and grapes have always been cultivated in the Field, and all this cultural and historical reserve has not changed significantly since antiquity, and it is surviving in the same form and can have the same function even today. Because of all this, Old Town Field has been listed on UNESCO World Heritage List since 2008. The revitalization of Old Town Field has started through the marking of pedestrian and cycling trails and archaeological sites, and you can taste delicious island food and get acquainted with traditional crafts and warm hospitality of the island of Hvar in Vrbanj this summer.
