Island Krapanj

Krapanj is the smallest inhabited island in Croatia as well as the smallest one in the whole Adriatic. Located on just over 350 meters from the mainland and brodarica village, the island covers the area of just over 0.45 square kilometres. Its shores are very shallow as the island itself too.

Traditionally people on the island are fishermen and sea sponge harvesters as the island have a long history of deep sea diving as well as an industry of sea sponge processing. Due to its sea sponge history the Islanders are known as ‘Spužvari’ (Spužva is a Croatian word for Sponge). Although the small sponge industry can still be found on the island, it slowly died as diving was proven to be a pretty dangerous activity, so instead, local people moved towards scuba diving and spearfishing. Nowadays, there is a small sponge museum in the island’s Monastery that exhibits some artefacts from the period.

16th century built Franciscan church and monastery is also on Krapanj where you can see The Last Supper painting by the Renaissance painter Francesco da Santa Croce as well as its well known Renaissance cloister.