Fresh off our morning encounter with the jellyfish and still riding the heavy waves of the Dubrovnik fjaka, we decided to push forward past Lastovo toward the island of Vis. It is the furthest inhabited Croatian island from the mainland. That isn’t just a geographical fact—it’s a character trait. Vis is an island that actively chose to be further away than the others.
Further from the tourists, further from the noise, and further from everything the Adriatic typically sells on glossy postcards.
Past the Glavat Lighthouse
We sailed past the Glavat lighthouse, skirting Lastovo, which we caught a glimpse of only as a dark silhouette rising above the waterline, and pointed the bow west. The sea was vast and long. The captain remained silent in that specific way that implies everything is absolutely fine. The rookies remained silent in that specific way that implies they had finally learned not to ask stupid questions when the captain is quiet. Either way, after five days on the open water, our maritime rituals had finally taken on a solid, seasoned edge.
The Harbor of Vis
The harbor district of Kut—an array of ancient stone houses perched right above the sea, beautifully restored facades, and a silence that isn’t empty, but deeply saturated with history. We moored.
I stepped onto the shore and looked around. Something here felt off. The place was just too peaceful for a spot with such a chaotic backstory. Because Vis had a past that, for many decades, people weren’t even allowed to whisper about.
During the Cold War, Tito’s regime transformed the island into a massive military fortress, building thirty heavy military installations—including a secret underground submarine base, hidden artillery batteries, and a fully equipped underground hospital. The entire island was tunneled into a labyrinth of caves, underground bunkers, and shelters. Imagine twenty kilometers of tunnels carved deep into the unforgiving rock.
For foreigners, Vis was a strictly forbidden zone until 1989. Fifty years of absolute isolation. While the surrounding Adriatic islands were busy building hotels, mega-resorts, and beach promenades, Vis was busy constructing missile silos and communication centers buried deep within its mountains.
It actually began during World War II, when Vis served as the primary hideout for Josip Broz Tito and his partisans. Its strategic position right in the middle of the Adriatic Sea, equidistant from Italy and the Croatian mainland, made it an invincible stronghold. Tito hid out in a local cave, the British built an airfield on the island, and the Germans never managed to capture it.
After the war, Tito kept this strategic gem strictly for the military. These installations economically choked the local population, as tourism was completely illegal. The island existed on navigational maps, but in the reality of the civilian world, it was entirely invisible.
Military Heritage as a Business
The Yugoslav People’s Army finally abandoned the island on May 30, 1992. The newly formed Croatian military showed zero interest in these monstrous underground complexes and left them to the elements. Paradoxically, they became the island’s biggest tourist attraction.
Today, you can freely walk into the massive concrete tunnels where warships and submarines used to hide from spy satellites. You can stand inside the command bunker where high-ranking officers planned to survive a nuclear winter, or explore the eerie, abandoned barracks.
Or, you can do exactly what we did—just sit back in the harbor of Kut, sip the local Vugava wine, and stare at the stone houses that survived it all without uttering a single word.
Yes, Vis has Vugava—a crisp white wine made from an indigenous grape variety that grows nowhere else on earth. The island clearly has a taste for exclusivity.
It was time to face the reality of returning to our office desks. Morning promised a windy, high-stakes finale. Somewhere behind our stern lay twenty kilometers of military tunnels, Tito’s cave, and bunkers still waiting for their next explorers. Due to a tight schedule and our own stinginess to shell out for a guided jeep tour, we passed on the tunnels. It remains the one and only thing on this entire journey that I truly regret.
