Tower of Love - Silba Island

Small in area, the island hides some of the most beautiful beaches on the Adriatic, and is surrounded by the cleanest and wisest sea. Beautiful nature, rich history and serenity are reason enough to return to it from year to year.

Few islands in Croatia can boast of as many hidden and beautiful stories as Silba. This Dalmatian island is a place where you will not find cars, they are forbidden here. It is an island ruled by pedestrians and where love has its monument.

The island of Silba covers an area of ​​only 15 square kilometers in the Zadar archipelago. The narrowest part is the only settlement of the same name. Small in area, the island hides some of the most beautiful beaches on the Adriatic, and is surrounded by the cleanest and wisest sea. Pedestrian Island, as the locals call it, is an island that lives its own life. Beautiful nature, rich history and serenity are reason enough to return to it from year to year.

Silba is full of magnificent courtyards, surrounded by high walls, but also churches. Its inhabitants, since the island is on a waterway, often boarded ships as sailors and sailed to distant lands from which they returned with great wealth.

Many of the sailors have known how to roam the seas for years, and just such a story is tied to, the tower that rises from the center of the island. Legend has it that Captain Petar Marinić decided in 1872 to build a tower so that his beloved could wait for his ship on it.

Silba - an island where love has its monument:

Namely, in the 19th century, Petar Marinić and Antonija Mauro fell in love. Both young, beautiful and with many plans for living together. Peter was a sailor, and Antonia greeted him with longing every time he returned from sailing. Before going on a trip, he promised her: "We will get married when I return, we will plant a garden around the house, and a tower in the garden from which we will watch the whole island and the sea." A kiss and farewell followed.

The years passed, and Peter became acquainted with all the cruelty of the cold seas, both of America, of the coast of Australia. At the same time Antonia realized all the storms and unbeliefs of loneliness. Eventually she got tired of waiting and married another man.

After a long voyage across the world's oceans, Peter returned to his native island after 20 years. Now he was no longer just a sailor, but a real sea wolf who was greeted by many girls on his return. But his Antonia was not there. His attention was drawn to a child who looked strikingly like his love from his youth. His friends told him that it was Antonija's daughter Domenika, and Petar knelt in front of her and said: “Antonija was not waiting for me, if your mother could not become my wife, then it will be you, her daughter. I will wait until this child develops into a woman. ”

Peter was persistent and waited, as long as 20 years as his voyage through the seas of the world. When he married Domenica, he built a tower in the garden long promised to her mother, next to which still stands the inscription: “This tower was built in 1872 as a sign of love and fidelity. It was built by the old sea wolf Petar Marinić. ”