The hilltowns of inland Istria

Three medieval hilltowns stand within forty minutes of the house, each on its own ridge, and each best kept for a slow morning in the first light.

Inland Istria is a country of low hills and long horizons, the old walled towns set on the crowns of them. Your concierge shapes the drive to the early light and holds a table in a konoba, so a town is at its most yours in the calm of the morning and you are home for lunch on the terrace.

Motovun is the tallest of them, riding a steep hill above the Mirna, circled by its walls, a single road winding up to the gate. Thirty minutes from Rovinj and from Poreč and forty from the house, its climb through the ramparts, the vineyards falling away on every side, is the walk people come for.

Grožnjan became, last century, a town of artists and musicians. Its summer academy, Jeunesses Musicales, fills the lanes with students, and their practice drifts through open windows as you wander with the whole morning to spend. Buzet holds the northern ridge above the Mirna, a small walled old town crowning a working one, its konobe serving the same few honest dishes they have kept for generations.

You give a single town to a morning and keep the days close and easy, and the towns are at their most beautiful in late spring and through the autumn, when the valley light runs long and gold.