No matter what time your boat arrives at the walled city of Korcula Town on this close-in Adriatic island, you'll encounter crowds of people mobbing the Marco Polo Tours office on the dock looking for accommodations, maps, directions, and other information about the island before they disappear through the Land Gate and into Korcula Town's historic walled core. That's probably due to the island's status as one of the most popular day trips available from Split, Dubrovnik, and Orebic on the Peljesac Peninsula, as well as a nice excursion from smaller towns along the coast.
Korcula Town is the focus of most tourist activity on the island as well as the main transportation hub. Its ferry landing is an area full of shops, kiosks, cafes, and tourism-related offices that has a disconcerting Grand Central Station feel and makes you want to get back on the boat and go someplace else. However, once you climb the 19th-century Grand Staircase with its 15th-century Revelin tower and walk through the 14th-century Land Gate, Korcula Town becomes a medieval cocoon that wraps you in a sense of how life was lived here centuries ago.
Behind the wall you see when you approach the island (the south wall is the only one left standing), Korcula Town is crisscrossed with picturesque structures built with materials from local islands' stone quarries that house restaurants, museums, families, and offices. Hilly, dark, narrow streets branch off from the enclave's major north-south thoroughfare (Korculaskog Statuta) in a pattern that resembles a trout skeleton, creating the illusion of a central boulevard with a lot of short side streets radiating from it. You can spend hours walking up and down these narrow offshoots and never know exactly where you are in relation to the walled town's exit. Note: The approach to Korcula Town from the sea makes for one of the best vacation pictures ever if snapped in the morning.
Korcula, which is just a little over a mile from the mainland across the Peljesac Channel, once was covered with so many pine trees that the sight led the Greeks who settled here around 400 B.C. to dub the island Kerkyra Malaina (Black Corfu). As with many of the islands in the southern Adriatic, there is evidence that Korcula was the site of Neolithic settlements. Records show that it also experienced much the same historic string of takeovers and fortunes as the rest of Dalmatia's coastal settlements, including long stretches of Venetian rule.
Today, tourists are drawn by Korcula Town's well-preserved walled city and its medieval attractions, plus the city's claim that it is the birthplace of legendary explorer Marco Polo. Tourists also travel to Korcula to see the traditional Moreska Sword Dance, an annual spectacle that recalls a battle between Christians and "infidels" that was fought over a woman. And finally, the island is the source of excellent olive oil and wine, most notably white wines (Posip, Grk) produced from grapes grown in the island's interior.
The Legend of Marco Polo
Legend, but not documentation, says that explorer Marco Polo was born in 1254 in Korcula Town in a modest stone house to the right of the cathedral's bell tower. Korcula Town's city fathers have not hesitated to capitalize on the city's supposed link to greatness; there is at least one restaurant, hotel, boat, and sandwich in this town named after the legendary navigator. However, according to a tour guide, there is no concrete evidence that Marco Polo ever set foot in Korcula Town, much less on Korcula, even though as a captain of the Venetian navy he was involved in a sea battle with the Genoese navy off the island in 1298. Marco Polo was taken prisoner, but he was sent to a jail in Genoa, not Korcula. The alleged birth house at Put Sv. Nikol bb (10kn/$1.75; 9am-1pm and 5-7pm daily in summer, closed in winter) post-dates Marco Polo's death by a couple of centuries and the claim that Marco Polo was born there actually grew from the fact that someone with the surname "DePolo" once lived in this house.
