Drniš & Meštrović Homeland Trail

The small inland town of Drniš, 30 km north of Šibenik in the karst uplands, is the birthplace of Croatia's greatest 20th-century sculptor Ivan Meštrović (1883–1962) and the excellent 'Meštrović Trail' museum route makes for a fascinating half-day away from the coast. Drniš itself is a delightful under-visited town with a well-preserved late-Ottoman old quarter (Drniš was under Turkish rule for 175 years, the longest of any Croatian town north of Dubrovnik) including the ruins of an early-16th-century mosque and the atmospheric 17th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery of Otavice. Meštrović's boyhood home in the tiny nearby village of Otavice has been preserved as a small museum, and 4 km further into the karst hills sits his extraordinary self-designed family mausoleum — the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer — an austere pale-limestone rotunda that Meštrović personally sculpted and where he, his parents, wife and children are all buried. The mausoleum's interior is a stunning modernist ensemble of Meštrović's own religious sculptures. Drniš is also famous for 'Drniški pršut' — a spectacular air-dried ham considered by many the finest in Croatia — and the town hosts a superb annual Pršut Festival in October with tastings and folk music.