Hvar is long. Sućuraj at the eastern end is 77 kilometres and about an hour and a half of driving from Hvar town, so a villa on Hvar can mean six different holidays, and the village decides which one you get more than the house does. Every figure below comes from ferry timetables, island tourist pages and villa rate cards published in September 2026, and none of it is a quote for your dates. Boat days village by village sit in Hvar’s north shore explained; this is the island wide choice that comes first.
Which part of Hvar suits which villa week?
| Area | The week it suits | The trade |
|---|---|---|
| Hvar town and the slope above it | Walking to dinner, boat days from the door, no car | The island’s busiest place in July and August, and parking |
| Stari Grad | Car ferry arrivals, quiet dinners, a base with a car | Twenty minutes from the Hvar town evening |
| Jelsa | Small children, flat streets, shallow beaches | Around thirty five minutes by road from Hvar town |
| Vrboska | Two couples who want nothing to happen | The fewest restaurants and houses |
| Sveta Nedjelja, Ivan Dolac and Zavala | Wine, cliffs, solitude, the best light | A one lane tunnel in and out, and colder water |
| Milna | South coast swimming about five kilometres from Hvar town | A hamlet of about a hundred people |
Pick the village before you look at a photograph. It decides the drive, the beach and whether the house has a pool.
Hvar town or Stari Grad?
Stari Grad is the car ferry port. Jadrolinija’s line 635 from Split is a 120 minute crossing, up to seven times a day in summer, and the terminal sits a little outside the town, which lies at the head of a long sheltered bay. It is the oldest town in Croatia, founded in 384 BC, and the UNESCO listed plain behind it runs east to Vrboska and Jelsa. Banj, the town beach, is 640 metres from the riva and shallow enough for small children.
Hvar town is where the catamaran lands, Jadrolinija’s line 641, fifty minutes to an hour from Split and foot passengers only. It is where the boat days start, the Pakleni Islands are about fifteen minutes off by taxi boat, and the historic core is pedestrianised.
Twenty minutes of ridge road separates them, so neither is a life sentence. Take Hvar town if the week has one big night and a Pakleni day in it, Stari Grad if you are bringing a car and want dinner without a queue.
Hvar town or Jelsa?
Jelsa is the family answer, and one beach makes the case. Grebišće, 1.5 kilometres from town, is a sandy bottomed bay that stays knee deep for fifty metres. Mina, 925 metres away, has a sandy bottom and pine shade, and Soline and Ženčišće are inside three kilometres. The town had 1,750 residents at the 2021 census, its streets are flat, and its municipality covers 55 per cent of the island, which is why Vrboska, Zavala and Ivan Dolac are all administratively Jelsa.
It has its own sea link: a Krilo catamaran between Split and Jelsa by way of Bol on Brač, about an hour and forty minutes each way, once a day in the timetable we read.
What you give up is the evening. Hvar town is around thirty five minutes by road, so a night out there is a driver at both ends. With children under about eight, take Jelsa anyway.
Jelsa or Vrboska?
They are 2.9 kilometres apart, so the beaches are the same either way. This is a choice about what is outside your gate.
Vrboska sits on a narrow inlet running about four kilometres inland, has an ACI marina, and puts a pine backed beach 399 metres from the middle of the village. It is 5.9 kilometres from Stari Grad and roughly 18 from Hvar town.
Jelsa is the bigger of the two, with more restaurants, a working harbour and the Split catamaran. Vrboska is where nothing happens, which for a lot of villa weeks is the point. Either way you can drive to the other in five minutes.
Is the south side worth the tunnel: Sveta Nedjelja, Milna and Zavala?
The south coast is the most beautiful part of Hvar and the most awkward to live on. Sveta Nedjelja, Ivan Dolac and Zavala are reached through a tunnel at Pitve of about 1.4 kilometres that is one lane wide, so traffic takes turns. Sveta Nedjelja sits under Sv. Nikola at 626 metres on terraces of plavac mali, and its beaches are steep but usable: Lučišće 1.9 kilometres away with pebbles, pines and a jetty, Jagodna 2.0 under red cliffs, Ivan Dolac 4.2. Zavala has about 170 residents and long pebble runs under the vineyards facing Šćedro. The water this side runs a couple of degrees colder than the north coast.
Milna needs no tunnel: south coast, about five kilometres from Hvar town, two coves, Vela Milna and Mala Milna, about a hundred residents.
So take Milna for south coast swimming without the drive. For the vineyards and the cliff light, sleep at Jelsa and drive over for the day, about twenty five minutes.
Milna on Hvar or Hvar town?
Write it as Milna on Hvar every time, because Brač has a Milna too, and that one is a sailing town on another island. This one is a hamlet of about a hundred people on Hvar’s south coast, about five kilometres from Hvar town, and it is the one south side address that needs no tunnel.
Milna on Hvar is a swimming base. Two coves, Vela Milna and Mala Milna, the wooded inlets of Malo and Veliko Borče beside them, and several restaurants in the village itself. The tourist board lists organised boat transport from Hvar port as well as the road, which makes it one of the few villages on this coast you can reach without a car.
Hvar town is a different week. The historic core is pedestrianised, the Pakleni Islands are about fifteen minutes off by taxi boat, and the evening runs late. What it charges you is parking, a ten to twenty minute walk from the outlying car parks, and quiet.
Take Milna on Hvar if the days matter more than the nights, and Hvar town if more than two evenings are out. If you are looking at a house at Milna on Hvar without a car, check this season’s boat times from Hvar town before you book it.
Where on Hvar are the villas actually?
Not evenly. Across the Hvar villa lists published in September 2026, one had twenty one of its twenty four houses in Hvar town or on the slope above it. Another clustered nine near Hvar town, five around Jelsa and three near Stari Grad, with single houses at Zavala, Dubovica, Jagodna and Basina.
The pools follow the same map, and not where people expect. Inside Hvar’s old town you are largely looking at stone houses with no pool and no parking. The pool villas are on the hill above the town and in the fields behind Jelsa and Stari Grad.
Sea access is scarcer still. Of everything we read, only a handful sat on the water: a bay house with its own mooring, one twenty metres from the sea at Dubovica, one ten metres from it at Jagodna, one at Jelsa thirty metres out with a seven metre pool.
So if a pool matters, do not search the old town, and if a dock or steps into the sea matters, say it in your first message. It cuts the list to a few houses and picks the village for you.
What does a villa week on Hvar cost?
Coast wide, most five bedroom houses with a private pool run between about EUR 950 and EUR 1,450 a night in high summer, set out in what a villa week in Croatia costs to rent. Hvar sits at the upper end of that.
Two real Hvar rate cards, read in September 2026. A four bedroom house at Jelsa with a seven metre pool, thirty metres from the water: EUR 800 a night from 1 July to 31 August, EUR 600 for the first half of September, EUR 500 for the second, on a six night minimum with any changeover day. A ten sleeper inside Hvar’s old town, stone and no pool: EUR 2,040 a night from 1 July to 31 August, EUR 1,740 in June and September, EUR 1,440 in May and October, on four nights minimum in high summer and three either side, with breakfast, housekeeping and the tourist tax included.
Starting rates for four and five bedroom pool houses around Hvar town ran from about EUR 650 to EUR 1,250 a night, and starting means the cheapest month, not July. Tourist tax, where the house is registered to charge it, is EUR 1.80 per person per night in Jelsa and Stari Grad for 2026 and EUR 2.00 in Hvar town.
Ask every house for the total for your exact nights and what is added on top. Two rates that look close finish a long way apart.
How do you get there, and where do the boat days leave from?
Split airport to the Split ferry berths is thirty to forty minutes by road. From there the catamaran to Hvar town is fifty minutes to an hour on foot, the car ferry to Stari Grad is 120 minutes with the car, and Krilo’s Jelsa catamaran takes about an hour and forty minutes by way of Bol. Drvenik to Sućuraj is a 35 minute car ferry up to eleven times a day, but Sućuraj is at the far eastern tip, so it only pays if you are driving down the coast. Every option is priced in Split airport to Hvar.
Take the Pakleni Islands from Hvar town itself, which they sit right off, and everything else from the quay nearest the house, which on the north shore means Stari Grad, Jelsa and Vrboska.
So if the house is anywhere but Hvar town or Stari Grad, come on the car ferry and hire a car. If it is in Hvar town, come by catamaran and settle the parking question before you book rather than after.
What should you send us?
The dates or the month, how many nights, how many people and how many bedrooms, whether you have picked a village yet, the must haves, and the budget with whether that is per night or in total. If a pool, a dock or walking distance to dinner is non negotiable, put it first, because each of those decides the village.
We come back with two or three houses that fit, each with the total for your nights and what sits on top. You book the house with the villa’s own booking office at its published rate, and we arrange the boat days, the chef and the drivers around it.
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