Holiday Villas in Novalja to Rent 2024/2025

Novalja travel guide

Novalja on Pag island is an international destination for music festivals and beach parties held on Zirce beach every summer.

Novalja is located towards the northwest end of the island of Pag. Pag island is connected to the mainland by bridge in the south and by ferry crossing from Prizna, on the mainland, to Zigljen.In recent years Novalja has become an international destination for music festivals and beach parties held on Zirce beach, a long pebble beach about 2 kilometres from the centre of Novalja. Young people and music lovers flock to Zirce every summer for these festivals. There are four principal beach clubs on Zirce. Aquarius beach club, Papaya beach club, Kalypso beach club and Euphoria beach club. There are many other shingle and sand beaches around Novalja which are more focused on families. The beaches are wide, with clear water and excellent access to the sea and located between one and thee kilometres from Novalja.

All the beaches can be reached by car and have parking areas. Of archaeological and historical importance in the area is the Talijanova buža, a 1.2 kilometre long antique underground aqueduct built in the 1st century AD to supply water to the town of Novalja. The entrance to the aqueduct can be viewed from the Town Museum, which also displays artefacts of Novalja's cultural and ethnological heritage.Activities available in the area include cycling and trail walking. There are a number of marked cycle routes and trails in the area. Lovers of rock climbing can climb the steep parts of the peak of Sveti Vid and the rocks above the Ručica beach in the north-west part of Pag Bay. There are a number of dive centres in Novalja or Stara Novalja offering instruction and guided dives to see the amphorae from a 1st century BC sunken Roman merchant ship, which is located at a depth of about 30 metres in the small Bay of Vlaska Mala. In addition to the Prizna to Zigljen ferry service to the mainland, a fast catamaran line connects Novalja to the neighbouring island of Rab and the city of Rijeka. The passenger boat Maslina connects Lun (17 kilometres from Novalja) with the island of Rab.