Loviste, Peljesac, Croatia

Loviste is a small town in southern Dalmatian peninsula of Peljesac. Although the peninsula is geographically linked to the mainland, it has all the characteristics of island resorts. This is particularly true for Loviste, which had no road connection to other places on the Peninsula, until a few decades ago. Place was founded by fishermen from the neighboring island of Hvar, which came to the area of Loviste hunting – the name of the town means hunting grounds in croatian. Settlers from Hvar were accompanied by citizens of the old village Nakovana which lies 300 meters up the slope of the mountain of St. Ilija, which is the highest mountain on the peninsula of Peljesac. It is possible, that Loviste was actually founded by people from Nakovana, but the facts are not completely clear. Nakovana (Upper and Lower) are nowadays completely empty villages, although it used to be the center of olive production at the time of the Dubrovnik republic, and besides Ston with great salt pans, Nakovana was the most important town on the Peljesac peninsula.

Today on this area, it is all about tourism. The nearest populated places to Loviste are Viganj and Kuciste, two of the most interesting locations for surfers and kitesurfers, since there is almost always suitable wind blowing up the Korcula canal. Korcula and Orebic are next major cities with big influence on Loviste. Especially Korcula with its rich history and as the birthplace of Marco Polo is extremely interesting tourist destination, where also large passenger cruisers stop every day.

Loviste is for tourists from Slovenia interesting primarily because it is still fairly quiet and peaceful town, which offers a number of apartments, and also it is not crowded, as the visitors disperse in the long coast line of the gulf. Most of these visitors are returning year after year and are practically almost locals. Despite the tourism local people did not abandon the production of great domestic olive oil, vegetables and wine. All this is in available to buy everywhere around Loviste.