Zadar Jewellery

Jewellery on this coast has two local specialities. Red coral, harvested from Adriatic waters and worked into beads and settings, has been traded here for centuries and carries a price to match its scarcity; the real thing is dense, uneven in tone and sold with paperwork, while the cheap imitation is uniform and light. Filigree, fine twisted silver wire worked into patterns, is the other tradition, used in earrings and pendants that read as Dalmatian rather than generic.

The shops sit in the lanes between the forum and Kalelarga, mixed in with the goldsmiths who serve the city itself with wedding rings and repairs rather than visitors. Croatian gold is usually 585, marked as 14 carat. Anything sold as coral for the price of costume jewellery is not coral, and a jeweller who cannot tell you where a piece was made is worth walking away from.