Vrbovsko Old Town

The small mountain town of Vrbovsko sits on a green terrace above the Dobra river gorge and is the historical eastern gateway to Gorski Kotar. Its compact centre is a lovely ensemble of late-19th-century Habsburg-Croatian architecture: elegant pastel villas of former merchants who grew wealthy on timber and iron trade along the Zagreb–Rijeka road, an elegant parish church of Saints Peter and Paul (1774) with an unusual octagonal bell tower, and a beautifully restored covered wooden market on the main square. Vrbovsko was for centuries a major frontier post — first between Habsburg Croatia and Ottoman Bosnia, later between the Habsburg and Napoleonic empires — and the small but excellent town museum in the old Habsburg railway station covers this rich history along with the story of the town's WWII partisan resistance. A signposted 15-minute walk from the town centre takes you to the Dobra river gorge — a startlingly deep and narrow limestone slot with the emerald river far below, spanned by an atmospheric old iron railway bridge. Vrbovsko is a natural stop just off the A6 motorway with excellent local food at Konoba Rimac — trout from the Dobra and forest-mushroom risotto.