Croatia: The Country That Invented the Necktie and the Dalmatian Coast
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The necktie was invented in Croatia. During the Thirty Years War in the 17th century, Croatian mercenaries serving in France wore a distinctive knotted scarf at the throat as part of their military uniform. The French found the style striking enough to adopt — cravate in French is a corruption of Croate, Croat. From France, the fashion spread across Europe and eventually the world. Every business meeting, every formal dinner, every occasion where a man tightens a strip of fabric around his neck carries a thread of Croatian origin.
The Dalmatian coast is justifiably among the most beautiful coastlines in the Mediterranean — 1,800 kilometres of jagged limestone shore, 1,200 islands, and towns of Venetian-era stone buildings that look as though they were built specifically to be photographed at golden hour. Dubrovnik, the walled city on the Adriatic, was an independent republic for centuries and is now so popular with visitors that cruise ships have had to be limited to protect it. The walls that once kept out armies now struggle against a different kind of pressure.
Dalmatian food is Mediterranean simplicity at its best: grilled fish, olive oil, capers, wild herbs, peka — slow-roasted meat or octopus under a bell-shaped lid buried in embers. The Pag cheese — hard, salty, aged from the milk of sheep that graze on salted vegetation near the sea — is unlike any other cheese on earth. Croatia has been producing it since the island of Pag was first settled.
