4 Best Sights in The Pelješac Peninsula, Southern Dalmatia

Perched on a hill overlooking Trstenica Beach, award-winning Korta Katarina is a sophisticated venue to try Pelješac wines and the most accessible winery from Orebić. Korta is the name for the typical courtyards outside sea captains' homes around town, while Katarina is the daughter of the American couple, Lee and Penny Anderson, who traveled to Croatia in 2001, fell in love with it, and opened the winery. A winery tour, tasting, and optional food pairings, which range from gourmet tapas to a divine five-course pairing menu, can be arranged in advance. For an immersive winery experience, the five-star Villa Korta Katerina next door, a Relais & Chateaux member, has eight luxury rooms available to rent.

There are records of salt being collected by Romans in this area dating back to 167 B.C, but it was the Republic of Dubrovnik that fully recognized the economic potential of the salt pans. In 1333, they founded the towns of Ston and Mali Ston and built a fortified wall to protect them. Eventually sea salt became the Republic's most valuable product, generating a third of its wealth. You can tour the massive salt pans—the oldest in Europe—to learn about the ancient collecting process, still in use today: the pans fill with seawater, which evaporates in the sun, and the salt that remains is shoveled out. If the salt pans are closed when you arrive, ask at Vila Koruna restaurant in Mali Ston (whose owners also operate the salt pans) about organizing a tour. You can buy small souvenir bags of sea salt around Mali Ston, which make an excellent culinary gift from the region.

In order to protect the enormously valuable Ston salt pans, in 1333 the Republic of Dubrovnik built a 7-km (4½-mile) fortified wall (purportedly second in length only to the Great Wall of China), effectively controlling land access to the peninsula. The stretch of wall that remains is 5½ km (3½ miles) long, and you can walk atop it from Ston to Mali Ston, which takes about 40 minutes and offers incredible views of the channel and the salt pans. It's a strenuous walk, so good shoes and a moderate level of fitness are recommended.

Perched 492 feet up the hill above Orebić is this modest 15th-century Franciscan monastery. During the heyday of the Dubrovnik Republic, the Pelješac Peninsula was under Dubrovnik's control, while just across the channel Korčula was ruled by their archrival, Venice. From their privileged vantage point on the hill, the Franciscan monks could spy upon their island neighbors, under strict orders to send a message to Dubrovnik if trouble looked likely. The monastery is also home to the Our Lady of the Angels icon that was said to protect captains on their voyages; when they passed under the monastery on their way home they would sound their sirens in greeting and the monks would ring the church bells in return. Today it's a welcoming retreat, with a lovely cloister and a small museum displaying scale models of the ships that local sea captains sailed across the oceans. You can also walk around the cemetery, where gray marble tombstones shaded by cypress trees mark the final resting places of many a local seafarer. It's worth the strenuous 40-minute hike from the center of Orebić (or the easier 5-minute drive) for the spectacular views across the channel to Korčula.