Zlatni Rt (Punta Corrente) Forest Park

A twenty-minute walk south of Rovinj's old town, the peninsula of Zlatni Rt — Punta Corrente in the Venetian dialect — turns into a 90-hectare forest park of Aleppo pine, cedar of Lebanon, holm oak and cypress, all planted in the 1890s by the Austrian industrialist Georg Hütterott who dreamed of turning it into an aristocratic winter resort. His resort never materialised, but the exotic trees stayed, and today the peninsula is Rovinj's outdoor living room. A network of shaded paths and gravel bike tracks weaves along the coast past a sequence of pebble and rock coves — Lone Bay for families and beach clubs, further out at Cuvi and Škaraba for near-total seclusion — where the water is startlingly clear even by Adriatic standards. There's a small climbing crag on the seaward cliffs (bolted, easy sport routes suitable for beginners, with the sea 20 metres below), plus a couple of kiosks in summer for drinks and ice-cream. The park is criss-crossed by cypress-lined avenues that make for lovely dawn or dusk runs, and dolphins are regularly spotted from the western tip in early evening. Come by bicycle from town along the seafront promenade for the classic combination — swim, walk, aperitivo — that defines a slow Rovinj day. Bring water shoes for the pebble entries and a mask for snorkelling around the low rock reefs.