Access Adriatic finds villas on the Split to Hvar coast and arranges the week around them. This guide answers the question that comes before that one: which stretch of Croatian coast to look in at all. Two decisions underneath it have their own pages and get a link rather than a repeat. Mainland or island is settled in Split or Hvar, where to base your week, and which island in which island near Split is best for a villa week. Everything below was checked in September 2026 against tourist boards, airport pages, the ferry lines and published villa lists.
Which part of Croatia is best for a villa week?
| Where | Airport | Villa stock | Sea and beaches | Boat days | Our price bands | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Istria | Pula, 6 km out | Wide, stone inland and modern on the water | Rock and shingle coves | Brijuni, locally | Not ours to price | Hill towns, food, drivers |
| Kvarner and the Zadar coast | Rijeka, on Krk; Zadar, 8 km out | Deep around Šibenik and Zadar | Pebble and rock, national parks behind | Kornati and Krka, locally | Not ours to price | Nature, quieter beaches |
| Split Riviera, Trogir, Kaštela | Split, at Kaštela, 19 km out | The deepest on the coast | Groomed pebble, town beaches | The best access anywhere | Split to Hvar bands | First trips, groups of eight up |
| The islands near Split | Split, then a crossing | Thin, Brač then Hvar | The clearest water | Shortest run to the good water | Split to Hvar bands | Returners, quiet, boat weeks |
| The Makarska Riviera | Split, 60 km back up the coast | Real but small | Long pebble under a mountain | Fewer departures | Not ours to price | Beach and mountain weeks |
| Pelješac and Korčula | Dubrovnik or Split, then a drive and a ferry | Thin | Quiet coves, wine country | Locally | Not ours to price | Wine, slow weeks |
| Dubrovnik | Dubrovnik, 15.5 km out | Thin and dear | Rock and town beaches | Locally | Not ours to price | Old town weeks, short stays |
Read your row rather than the prettiest one. The airport sets your arrival day, the stock column decides whether the house exists at all in the fortnight you want, and the last column decides the rest.
Istria or Dalmatia?
Istria is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic, nine tenths of it Croatian, and for a villa week it behaves as its own country. Pula airport is 6 kilometres from the city, with Rijeka airport on the island of Krk as the second door, 17 kilometres from Rijeka’s railway station. The houses match the landscape. One villa list describes Istrian villas as running from stone cottages in hilltop villages to modern beach front houses, and a good share sit inland, in the vineyard and hill town belt around Motovun and Buzet.
Dalmatia is the other holiday. On the list we read in September 2026 it carried 795 houses against Istria’s 294, and 458 of the Dalmatian ones sat in the central stretch alone.
So if your week has boat days in it, look in Dalmatia and fly to Split. If it has hill towns and a hire car in it, look in Istria and fly to Pula. Holding both inside seven nights costs you most of two days.
Where do the villas sit on the Split Riviera?
On both sides of the runway. Split airport is in the town of Kaštela, 19 kilometres from Split on the west side of Kaštela Bay. West of it sit Kaštela, Trogir and the island of Čiovo. East of it sit Split, Podstrana and the road towards Omiš. That is the whole belt, and it is why transfers here run fifteen or twenty minutes rather than an hour.
On that list it is also the deepest stock in the country: 257 houses around Split and 142 around Trogir on that September 2026 list, inside 458 across central Dalmatia, against 62 around Dubrovnik. The prices we quote are Split to Hvar figures rather than national ones. In July and August most five bedroom houses with a private pool run between EUR 957 and EUR 1,446 a night, the cheapest we checked was a five bedroom on Čiovo at about GBP 335, and a ten bedroom sleeping twenty was EUR 1,875. Outside those two months the same houses fall, by a tenth to a half depending on the house, and from June to September expect a five to seven night minimum, often with Saturday arrivals only. The workings are in what a villa week in Croatia costs to rent.
Pick your side of the airport before you pick a house. East is is Podstrana a good base. West is is Kaštela a good place to stay and Split or Trogir, where to stay.
What do the islands near Split change?
One thing, and it runs through every day: the crossing. Brač is the largest island in Dalmatia at 396 square kilometres with 13,931 residents, and Hvar carries the Stari Grad Plain, UNESCO listed since 2008. What neither carries is stock. That September 2026 list showed 66 houses on Brač, 18 on Hvar, 7 on Vis and 2 on Šolta, so on an island your dates decide the house more often than your taste does. Pick the island in which island near Split is best for a villa week, or go straight to villa concierge Hvar if Hvar is already the answer.
What changes further south, at Makarska, Pelješac, Korčula and Dubrovnik?
The mountain arrives first. The Makarska Riviera runs about 60 kilometres from the Omiš coast to the Neretva delta at the foot of Biokovo, Croatia’s second highest mountain, whose top stands at 1,762 metres, and its long pebble beaches sit in a thin strip between the two. Makarska town is about 60 kilometres southeast of Split and 140 northwest of Dubrovnik, which is the trade in one line: an hour further from the airport, a better beach at the end of it. One list covering the riviera carried 110 houses across eight places, 68 of them in Makarska. It is a beach and mountain week rather than a boat week.
Past that, Pelješac runs 65 kilometres from Ston to Cape Lovišta. Getting there changed on 26 July 2022, when the Pelješac Bridge opened to traffic, 2,404 metres long, and the coast road was rerouted over it rather than through the Neum corridor. From Orebić the car ferry to Korčula takes twenty minutes and runs twenty two times a day in high season. Korčula is 46.8 kilometres long with 14,594 residents and makes a white wine, Grk, that rarely leaves the island.
Dubrovnik is further again and is a city break with a pool attached. The motorway stops at Ploče, so the last stretch is coast road, and the airport sits at Močići near Čilipi, about 15.5 kilometres from the city. The villa stock is the thinnest on this page, in the low dozens on the lists we read. If Dubrovnik is the week, fly into Dubrovnik and stay in the south rather than trying to hold it and Split inside seven nights.
What is the most beautiful place to stay in Croatia?
It depends on what the week is for, and the candidates are not equally good places to rent a house. Rovinj, in Istria, was built on an island and only joined to the mainland in 1763 when the channel was filled in. Korčula town is a small walled promontory of 5,663 people. Dubrovnik’s old city and Split’s Diocletian’s Palace have been UNESCO listed since 1979, Trogir’s centre since 1997. Away from towns, the Kornati archipelago south of Zadar is the densest island group in the Mediterranean, and Krka national park sits a few kilometres northeast of Šibenik with the largest travertine cascade system in Europe inside it.
Here is the catch photographs leave out. In every one of those towns the beautiful part is the old centre, where the accommodation is apartments rather than houses with pools, and the villa sits a drive outside it. Decide whether you want to look at the pretty thing or sleep in it, then choose the region on the practical columns.
Where can we find the house, and where can we arrange the week?
Two different maps, and the gap between them matters more than anything else here.
We will look for the house anywhere in Croatia. Istria, the Zadar coast, Makarska, Korčula, Dubrovnik: send the region and we come back with two or three houses that fit, each with the total for your nights and what sits on top. You book the house with the villa’s own booking office at its published rate.
The week around the house is narrower. The boats, the chefs and the drivers we arrange run from Split to Hvar, the stretch we know house by house and skipper by skipper. In Istria or the far south you would get the shortlist and the numbers from us and arrange the days yourself locally. So the Split Riviera and the islands near Split are the only places where we can hand you the whole week. Day trips are on private boat tours and the rest is on villa concierge Croatia.
Say the region in your first message. If it is outside our stretch we will tell you which half we can cover before you commit rather than after.
What should you send us?
Dates or the month, how many nights, how many people and how many bedrooms, the region if it is fixed or that it is still open, the two or three things the house must have, and the budget with whether that is per night or in total. If a short crossing, a walkable dinner or a pool by the sea is what decides it, say which, because it moves the region before it moves the house.
We come back with two or three houses that fit, each with the total for your nights and what sits on top, you book the house with the villa’s own booking office at its published rate, and we arrange the boat days, the chef and the drivers around it.
Request villa options on find a villa.
Next step
Turn what you have read into one short message.
Share dates, group size, where you are staying, and what you want to arrange. Access Adriatic can then point you toward the most relevant experience page or request path.