Roč

Barely a hundred people live inside the walls of Roč, and yet this tiny stone village is one of the most historically consequential places in Croatia. It was here, in 1483, that the Missal of Duke Novak was completed — the first book ever printed in the Glagolitic script, and only the second book printed in any Slavic language. That heritage is celebrated all along the seven-kilometre country road down to nearby Hum, dubbed the Glagolitic Alley, where eleven open-air sculptures by Croatian artists retell the story of Cyril and Methodius and the strange, angular alphabet they inspired. Roč itself is a compact medieval knot: a triple ring of walls, three gates, a Romanesque parish church of St. Bartholomew with a fragment of 12th-century Glagolitic inscription carved into its exterior, and a smaller church of St. Anthony frescoed with faded 14th-century biblical scenes. There are no ticket booths and no queues — knock at the priest's house to ask for church keys, in the old Istrian way. The village comes joyfully alive on the second Sunday of May for the International Meeting of Accordionists, when the tiny square fills with musicians from across the Alps and Balkans. The rest of the year it belongs to hikers, cyclists and the small osmica-style tavern beside the eastern gate, which serves house prosciutto and biska (mistletoe brandy) at wooden benches.