If you decide to cover the 15th stage of the 87th Giro d’Italia get your bicycles ready at the starting point in Poreč. In the 1970’s Poreč was named “the capital of Croatian tourism”. In summer the Riviera of Poreč sometimes hosts over one hundred thousand tourists. Poreč was known as a tourist destination already in the 19th century when it hosted members of the Austro-Hungarian royal palace and several other nobles and patricians. Poreč is a city with rich cultural heritage and many wine cellars. If you go to the city centre you will find numerous historical and cultural monuments among which stands out the complex of the Euphrasian Basilica included on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.

If you continue northeast and pass through Veli Maj the trail brings you to Tar – a fertile plateau which stretches on the one side to the sea and on the other to the mouth of the river Mirna. Would you like to find the place where, according to the experts of the FAO, the olives used for production of the Europe’s best olive oil are cultivated? Make a visit to Larun, the olive plantation at the foot of Tar. If you follow the trail of the 15th stage you will arrive to Novigrad, a small picturesque Mediterranean town with preserved medieval walls. The first tourist guide of the town was published in 1845, which testifies to a long tradition in tourism. If you would like to taste delicious seafood dressed with high-quality olive oil and drink scented wines like e.g. teran, borgonja or merlot, you must visit konobas and restaurants of Novigrad.

If you are in Novigrad at the end of July you can join the traditional blues festival that hosts artists’ from all over the world. From Novigrad, a road through Lovrečica will bring you to Umag, the city that from 1990 vaunts the only ATP tournament in the country - the Croatian Open. Umag seems to be crowded with tourists, hotels and apartments but the city museum also vaunts a rich archaeological collection and the city is known for the Organum Histriae, an event which takes place in September with the aim to promote the organs and the organic music of Istria. At that point the 53,1 km long section of the stage in Croatia ends. From Umag the trail continues through Bašanija and Volparija to the border crossing Plovanija and after the section of 22 km in Slovenia leads to the final destination in Italy – San Vendemiano, the birthplace of Alessandro del Piero, a football player of Juventus, Turin.