Učka Nature Park

Učka Nature Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Učka is the mountain that rises straight out of the sea behind the old Austrian resort of Opatija and the Kvarner riviera, at the north-eastern corner of the Istrian peninsula in Croatia, and its nature park offers, within half an hour's drive of the beach promenades, a summit of 1,400 metres with one of the widest views in the country. It is free to enter and without gates. The easiest way up is by car: the old road over the mountain, which the motorway tunnel beneath Učka has left almost empty, climbs from Opatija and Ičići to the pass of Poklon at 922 metres, where the park's new visitor centre, opened in 2021, stands, with an imaginative exhibition on the mountain's nature and folklore, a café and the start of several trails;

from the pass a narrow asphalt road continues for about seven kilometres nearly to the top of Vojak, the highest peak, from whose car park the summit tower is a walk of ten minutes. Walkers can climb to Vojak from Poklon in about an hour and a half through beech forest, or, the classic ascent, from sea level at Lovran by way of the village of Lovranska Draga, a stiff four hours. On the inland side, a marked educational path of two hours leads down through the canyon of Vela Draga. Local guides offer hiking days with a picnic, ridge walks to a mountain shelter, trail running and private tours; the mountain is a well-known site for paragliding, launched from near the summit with a landing by the sea, for free climbing, in Vela Draga, and for mountain biking, with some 150 kilometres of marked tracks.

Visiting Učka Nature Park: what you will see

Učka was declared a nature park in 1999 and covers about 160 square kilometres, taking in the Učka massif itself and part of the adjoining Ćićarija plateau to the north. The mountain is a ridge of Cretaceous limestone about twenty kilometres long, parallel to the coast, whose highest point, Vojak, 1,401 metres, stands only a few kilometres from the shore; on its top the Austrian tourist society built, in 1911, a round stone lookout tower, from whose platform, on a clear day, the view takes in the whole of Istria, the gulf of Trieste, the Julian Alps and the Dolomites to the north-west, the Kvarner bay with Rijeka and the islands of Krk, Cres and Lošinj below, the Gorski Kotar mountains and Velebit to the east, and, in exceptional conditions, Venice. Because it stands between the sea and the continent, the mountain catches a good deal of rain and cloud, and its slopes, in contrast to the dry Istrian interior, carry thick forests, of beech above all, which turn red and gold in October, of sweet chestnut on the lower seaward slopes round Lovran, whose large, sweet chestnuts, the maruni, are celebrated with a festival each October, and of oak, hornbeam and planted pine.

On the western side, Vela Draga is a canyon carved into the limestone, in which erosion has left freestanding rock towers and needles up to a hundred metres tall, a place where the sport of free climbing began in Croatia in the 1930s. The cliffs and open slopes are one of the last nesting places in the northern Adriatic of the griffon vulture, and golden eagles, peregrines, eagle owls, brown bears, wolves, wildcats, roe deer and wild boar live in the park; the Učka bellflower, a small blue campanula, grows on its rocks and nowhere else in the world. The mountain villages, Mala Učka, Vela Učka, Brest, largely abandoned, were the homes of shepherds and charcoal burners, and a handful of people at Žejane, on the Ćićarija, still speak Istro-Romanian, one of the rarest languages in Europe.

Učka Nature Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times, and the visitor centre at Poklon daily in the season, with shorter hours in winter. May and June, with orchids and peonies in the meadows and fresh green beech, and September and October, with clear air, autumn colour and chestnuts, are the best months; July and August are hot by the sea and a pleasant ten degrees cooler on top, with haze that often spoils the long views;

winter brings snow to the summit on a number of days, sometimes closing the summit road, and the sharpest visibility of the year, especially after the bura wind has blown. Cloud can cap the peak at any time, so check the summit webcam before driving up. Allow a half-day by car, a full day on foot. Opatija and Lovran are at the mountain's foot, the hill towns of inland Istria, Hum, Roč and Motovun, half an hour west, and Rijeka half an hour east.