Brač is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, with an area of , making it the largest island in Dalmatia, and the third largest in the Adriatic. It is separated from the mainland by the Brač Channel, which is wide.Brački kanal The island's tallest peak, Vidova gora, stands at , making it the highest point of the Adriatic islands. The island has a population of 13,931, making it also by population the largest island in Dalmatia and the third largest in the Adriatic. The island is divided in eight municipal units with twenty-two settlements, ranging from the main town Supetar, with more than 3,300 inhabitants, to Murvica, where less than two dozen people live. Brač Airport is the largest airport of all islands surrounding Split.
Brač is known as a tourist destination, for the Zlatni Rat beach in Bol, the marina in Milna, the white limestone which was used for the palace of Diocletian, the stonemason school in Pučišća, the Charter of Povlja, author and first president of Croatia Vladimir Nazor, its olive oil with protected designation of origin, the Kopačina cave near Donji Humac with archaeological findings dating to the 12th millennium BCE, the Blaca hermitage, and other things.
Name
Brač () is known in some of its local Chakavian dialects as Broč (). In or and . The Greek name of the island was (Elaphousa/Elaphussa), apparently derived from elaphos ("stag"). Based on this, it has been speculated that the original name of the island may have been derived from Messapic *brentos ("stag"). The Messapic word is deduced from a gloss "brendon — elaphon [deer]".The suggestion is due to Anton Mayer (1957), adducing Stephanus De urbibus: "Brettia, insula maris Adriatici habens fluvium Brettium. Hanc Graeci Elaphusam, alii vero Bretanidem appellant", cited after Stanisław Rospond, Slawische Namenkunde: Die slawischen Ortsnamen (1992), p. 162. Polybius and Plinius record the name of the island as Brattia. Other names through history for Brač have been Brectia, Bractia, Brazia, Elaphusa, Bretanide and Krateiai (in the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, identification unsure).
Stephanus of Byzantium writes in the 6th century in his Ethnica of Brettia: Brettia, Island in the Adriatic Sea, with a river called Brettios. Greeks call it Elaphussa, the inhabitants Brettanis. The ethnicon should be Brettians, given how Polybios uses the Femininum. Today it is called Brettians.Original text:
Geography
Brač is with an area of the largest island in Dalmatia, and the third largest island in the Adriatic Sea overall. The island is roughly oval-shaped, being almost wide from east to west, and about north to south. Brač has a long and folded coastline with a length of more than , with numerous small and larger bays. Particularly noticeable are the natural harbours of Supetar, Splitska, Pučišća, and Povlja, Sumartin, Milna and Bobovišća.
Brač is separated from the mainland to the north by the Brač Channel, which is wide and down to 78m deep. To the north it faces Split and Omiš. To the east it is separated from the mainland by a continuation of the Brač channel, with distances between at Baška voda up to at Makarska. To the south it faces the neighbouring island of Hvar, separated by the Hvar Channel with a maximal depth of 91m. The closest distance is between Murvica and the northern beaches of Hvar with less than , up to about at the east and west ends of Brač. To the west, it is separated from the island of Šolta by the Split Gates, which is about 800m wide. The uninhabited islet of Mrduja lies in the Split Gates. In an annual event, people from Brač and people from Šolta play a game of tug of war over the islet.
The island has been called the island without water (), but it does have a small number of sweet water springs. Most of the water needs to be brought from the mainland from the Cetina river through a pipe. An artificial tunnel has been built from the northern side of the island through the mountain to the south side, in order to allow the pipe to continue and serve not only Bol and Murvica, the two sole settlements on the southern side of the island, but also to continue to the neighbouring island Hvar.
The island is more rugged and mountainous than any of the other Dalmatian islands. The island's tallest peak, Vidova gora, or Mount St. Vid, stands at , making it the highest island point of the Adriatic islands. The south side of the island is particularly steep, as the distance from the beach to the Vidova Gora peak in only about – and up. The steepness of the south side makes the many natural bays hard to reach. Because of that, the south side of the island only has two settlements, Bol and tiny Murvica. It also makes the south side particularly amenable for vineyards. The east of the island is a high plateau. Until the Middle Ages, most of the population lived inland.
Geology The island is mostly made of limestone, which has shaped the history and economy of the island. The limestone originated in the Cretaceous about 100 million years ago, but Brač became an island only after the last ice age, (within the last 12,000 years, in the Holocene). Due to erosion and sedimentation, the island also has sandstone, breccia, clay, and terra rossa.
Settlements The twenty-two populated settlements of Brač are subdivided into eight municipal units (see Administration below for more details). A number of small unincorporated settlements can be found in the Selca municipality, including Nadsela, Podsmrčevik, Osridke, Nakal, and Nagorinac. The island also has a number of abandoned settlements, such as Podhume, Smrka, Straževnik, Gradac, Dubravica i Mošuje, Podgračišće, and others. Other places of interest are the Blaca hermitage and Drakonjina špilja.
Administration
The island is administratively divided into eight units, one city (a type of municipal unit with a larger town) and seven municipalities. These cover the twenty-two currently populated settlements of the island. Population numbers in the previous section are given per 2021 census. The island is part of the Split-Dalmatia County, but is not represented there as a whole, only through its city and municipalities.
The division into seven municipalities and a city happened after the administrative reorganisation of Croatia following Croatian independence in 1991. Before that, Brač was a single municipality (općina) in Yugoslavia with Supetar as the seat of the municipality. Still today, many of the administrative duties for the other seven municipalities are delegated to the city of Supetar.
With the arrival of the Narentines in the seventh or eighth century, the now abandoned Gradac became the first administrative centre of Brač. Venice declared in the late tenth century that Nerežišća should become the administrative and governmental centre of Brač. In 1827 this role was given to Supetar by the Austro-Hungarian administration. The island was divided into 21 cadastral communities by the Austro-Hungarian administration - corresponding to the currently existing settlements besides Ložišća, which was a part of Bobovišća. These cadastral communities were mostly preexisting administrative units and not introduced by the Austro-Hungarians.
In terms of the Roman Catholic church, the island has 23 parishes: one for each of the settlements, and an additional one for the hermitage Blaca. All parishes of Brač have been part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hvar-Brač-Vis, with the seat of the Bishop in Hvar since it was founded in 1145, and belonged previously to the Diocese of Salona.
History The Kopačina cave near Donji Humac is one of the oldest traces of human habitation in Dalmatia. And yet, Brač has been called island without history () by Vladimir Nazor, easily the island's most well known author. Unlike all of the other larger islands, neither the Illyrians (who arrived in the 2nd millennium BCE), nor the Greek (4th century BCE), nor the Romans (1st century CE) have established a larger settlement on the island. It is only well after the Slavs settled (8th century) and the Venetians took over the administration of the island (10th century), that the island saw larger settlements and towns develop. First, Gradac was the administrative centre, which moved to Nerežišća between 937 and 1000, and finally Supetar in 1827.
The history of Brač follows mostly the history of Dalmatia. Who ruled the island changed frequently. Some, like Rome or Venice, ruled for centuries, others, like the Normans, for a single year. But independently of who ruled the island, the island had an internal autonomous administration as described in the statutes of Brač, which allowed the island to develop a certain continuity - independently of whether the island was ruled from Byzantium, Vienna, or Paris. More important were the constant attacks by pirates, particularly from the Narentines and later the Kačić family in Omiš, which kept Brač in poverty and didn't allow for towns to develop along the coast well into the 15th century.
Prehistory (before the 3rd century BCE)
Archaeological findings in the Kopačina cave between Supetar and Donji Humac have been dated to the 12th millennium BCE. These are some of the oldest traces of human habitation in Dalmatia. The findings show that the cave has been inhabited until the 3rd millennium BCE (although not continuously). Some of the artefacts have originated in the Dalmatian hinterland, showing that Brač was part of a trade network with the mainland. In the Stone Age, the population seemed to have lived mostly inland.
In the second millennium BCE, the Illyrians moved in from the North and Northeast to the Balkan peninsula, including Brač. They replaced the previous population.
In the Bronze Age and Iron Age, it is assumed that numerous villages existed. Most of them seemed to have been in the eastern high plane of the island, and thus it is assumed that they lived on animal husbandry. Numerous simple fortifications, mostly built using dry stone constructions, indicate that the population was expecting to defend itself against attacks.
In the 4th century BCE Greek colonisation spread over many Adriatic islands and along the coast, but none of them have been found on Brač. In Škrip, traditionally known as the oldest existing settlement on the island, old walls have been found built in the Greek style, but it would be the only Greek colony which has been built inland instead along the coast, which is why it is unlikely to be a Greek colony. It remains an open question whether Brač had any organised Greek colonies, and if it did not, why. Nevertheless, Greeks visited the island and also traded with the Illyrian inhabitants. The toponomy of two of the southern bays still preserve the memory of such a trade: Farska (Hvarska in modern Croatian, referring to the old colony of Pharos on Hvar) and Garška (Grčka in modern Croatian, meaning Greek).
Brač lay on the crossroads of several trade routes from Salona (today Solin) to Issa (today Vis) and the Po River. Greek artifacts were found in the bay of Vičja near Ložišća on the estate of the Rakela-Bugre brothers. Many of the objects belonging to this still unexamined site are now on display in the Split Archaeological Museum.
Roman era (3rd century BCE-8th century CE)
Increased attacks from Illyrians on Greek colonies such as Pharos on neighbouring island Hvar and Roman trade routes lead to a time of upheaval and change that started with the Illyro-Roman Wars in 229 BCE and the establishment of a Roman protectorate covering the surrounding Greek colonies. Over the years, the area increasingly fell under Roman rule, with the establishment of the provinces of Illyricum and Dalmatia 32-27 BCE, including Brač. More peaceful times finally began after 9 CE, following the end of the Great Illyrian uprising.