Zadar Beaches

The city's own bathing is close and unfussy. Kolovare, fifteen minutes on foot south east of the walls, mixes concrete platforms with pebble and is the beach people walk to between other things. Borik, four kilometres the other way, is the larger and busier option, shallow and pine-backed with the hotels and campsite behind it, and the shoreline continues north through Puntamika and Diklo into a run of small rocky coves that stay quieter through August. Most of these are pebble or slab rather than sand, entries can be sharp, and swimming shoes are worth carrying.

Sand means leaving the city. Queen's Beach at Nin, twenty five minutes north west, runs about three kilometres behind a shallow lagoon you can wade a long way into, which is why families make the trip; the medicinal mud at the far end is signposted and used. Further out, Sakarun on Dugi otok is the pale-sand bay that fills the photographs, reached by ferry from Gazenica and then a drive across the island. Water quality along this coast is consistently high, the season runs roughly June to late September, and the bura wind can flatten a swimming plan in any month, so it is worth checking before committing to a beach day.