Kaštilac

Where it sits. Kaštilac is a fortified islet a few metres off the shore at Kaštel Gomilica, one of the seven small towns strung in a line along the bay between Split and Trogir. The rock it stands on is barely larger than the building, and a low stone bridge crosses the strip of water between it and the mainland. Inside the curtain wall, houses are built directly against the ramparts around a courtyard so small that a laundry line reaches across it. Fishing boats are moored to iron rings set into the sea wall. It is one of the least-known and most photogenic pieces of vernacular fortification on the Dalmatian coast, largely because almost nobody outside the Kaštela knows it exists.

Built by nuns against raiders. In the first half of the sixteenth century the Ottoman frontier ran close behind this coastal plain, and the farm workers of the fertile Kaštela fields had no protection. Landowners along the bay responded by building fortified refuges, each of which drew a village around it — hence the seven Kaštela, from Sućurac in the east to Štafilić in the west. Kaštilac is the odd one out: it was built from 1545 by the Benedictine nuns of the convent of St Benedict in Split, who owned the land here, for the tenants who worked it. Rather than raise a tower on the shore, they used a rock in the sea, so that pulling up the bridge cut the refuge off entirely. The plan worked, the settlement stuck, and the village around it kept the convent's name in the form Kaštel Gomilica.

On screen. In the fifth season of Game of Thrones, Kaštilac was dressed as a quarter of Braavos. The bridge, the sea gate and the enclosed courtyard supplied the free city's cramped, water-bound texture — a place where doorways open onto the sea and every route is a bottleneck — for scenes following Arya Stark through the city after her arrival. What the location could not supply was added elsewhere: the Titan straddling the harbour mouth is a digital creation, the wide canal views were composited, and the interiors of the House of Black and White were built as sets. Braavos was assembled from several Croatian units in that season, with Šibenik carrying most of the street and cathedral work and this islet providing the tighter, poorer, more maritime edge of the city.

A living place, not a monument. This is the point most visitors miss. Kaštilac is inhabited. The houses inside the walls are private homes, the courtyard is a shared yard, and there is no ticket office, no signage and no guide. Visitors are welcome to cross the bridge and walk the perimeter, and the residents are used to cameras, but the etiquette is that of a stranger walking into someone's garden: quiet, brief, and out of doorways. Early morning suits it, both for the light coming off the water and because the islet is largely empty of people.

What else is in the bay. The Kaštela plain behind the shore was the granary and vineyard of Split for centuries, and it still holds one genuinely significant piece of viticultural history: the local red grape crljenak kaštelanski, identified by DNA analysis in 2001 as the same variety as Californian Zinfandel and Italian Primitivo, was traced to old vines in these fields. A handful of small producers now bottle it again. The neighbouring villages are worth stringing together on foot or by bike along the shore path — Kambelovac with its round tower, Lukšić with the Vitturi castle and park, Stari with its harbour — a flat walk of several kilometres past a sequence of sixteenth-century fortifications that were all built for the same reason within a couple of decades.

Getting there and timing. Kaštel Gomilica has its own station on the Split suburban railway, about twenty minutes from Split's main station, and city bus 37 between Split and Trogir stops on the main road a few minutes' walk above the shore. Split airport is five kilometres west, which makes this an unusually convenient first or last stop on a Dalmatian trip. The shore path and bridge are level, but the courtyard is cobbled and the steps to the sea are steep and often wet. There is no entrance fee, no opening hours, and nothing to buy on the islet itself; the cafés are on the mainland promenade a hundred metres away.