Page 10 - Discovering Hvar

6,000 Illyrians who had come to aid Hvar’s native population. With the help of the fleet
sent by Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse, the Illyrians were defeated. A stone in-
scription reading, Pharians (disarmed) the Iadasinoi and their allies… that speaks of this
event, was found in Stari Grad and represents the oldest written document on Croatia’s

Adriatic coast.
Greek colonists undertook extensive actions to regulate the central largest and most
fertile plain on the island, larger than any other on the Adriatic islands, by cutting
straight roads through it and dividing it into 70 large plots (180x900 m), allocated to
the members of the new colony. This parcelling is still in evidence to this day and it is
the best-preserved example of Greek cadastre that has survived in the Mediterranean.
As of 7 July 2008 Stari Grad and Stari Grad?s plain are included in the UNESCO World

Heritage site list.
The man by the name of Demetrius left a distinct mark on the life of Pharos. This
army leader succeeded in becoming the ruler of the Illyrian state that occupied the
territory stretching all the way to the Albanian coast. He was defeated by the Romans
in 219 B.C. at Pharos (this battle too was fought in the wide Stari Grad Bay). Following
the defeat, he attempted to recapture his hometown by diplomatic activity and
by plotting. He died in 214 B.C. serving as advisor to the Macedonian king Philip V,
during the siege of the Peloponnesian city of Mesena.
From mid-1st century B.C., the town and the island of Pharos began to be thoroughly

Romanised. Roman Pharia, as the island’s municipal centre, preserved the heritage of
its Greek forerunner. The century of Roman peace, Pax Romana, saw the flourishing of
the pleasant rural life on every plot of fertile land. There is literally no piece of agricul-
tural land from Sućuraj to Paklinski otoci (islands) where traces of villae rusticae are not
encountered. In late Antiquity, other larger settlements began to spring up in addition
to Pharia. We know about Lisina, situated at the site today occupied by Hvar, and the
so-called Civitas vetus Ielsae, on Gradina peninsula, where Jelsa’s cemetery lies today.

The Slavs, i.e. Croats, arrived on the island in 7th and 8th centuries. The island was
then under the rule of the Narentines (Neretljani), a Slav ethnic group that inhabited
the Neretva delta. From this period date the settlements Dol, Vrbanj and Pitve, on the
Sts. Cosmas and Damian Church
south slopes of Stari Grad Plain. For a time, the island was part of the Croatian-
Hungarian Kingdom, but in 1278 the islanders chose the Venetian Republic as their
preferred ruler. In that year began the construction of a new town, Novi Grad, today’s
Hvar, called Liesna (its Slav name) that would become known as a safe port on the
voyage along the Adriatic. The Bishop moved to Novi Grad too (Hvar Bishopric was
established in 1154 in Stari Hvar / Stari Grad.

In 1331, the Statute of Hvar Municipality was enforced and implemented not only on
the island of Hvar but also on Vis and the smaller islands gravitating to these two large
ones and constituting Hvar Municipality. This chief medieval document asserted the
existing feudal relations and continued to regulate the life of the island communities

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