Otočac Town Centre & Nikola Tesla Square

Otočac is the largest town in the Lika-Senj county and the natural gateway to the Gacka valley — a compact settlement of pastel Habsburg-era facades wrapped around a central square dedicated to Nikola Tesla, who was born in the nearby village of Smiljan. The town's most poignant sight is the Church of the Holy Trinity, painstakingly rebuilt after being deliberately shelled and levelled by Yugoslav artillery in 1991 — the ruined bell tower has been kept as a memorial next to the new church. Wander to the town park to see the Croatian Defenders memorial, and along the promenade of the Gacka tributary where the water is a startling emerald from the karst spring only a few hundred metres upstream. The Gacka Museum in the old town hall explains the extraordinary hydrology of one of Europe's largest karst spring systems, plus the town's long tradition as a fly-fishing destination for the endemic Gacka brown trout. Otočac also has one of Croatia's most historically layered pieces of archaeology in the tiny 9th-century St. Mary's fragment stone slab — kept in the parish museum — bearing one of the oldest Croatian inscriptions in Glagolitic script.