A Cold War-era military tunnel on Vis island, once used to hide Yugoslav navy submarines — now a fascinating historical attraction you can explore by boat.
For forty-five years the island of Vis was a fortress. From the end of the Second World War until 1989 it was the main island base of the Yugoslav navy, closed to foreigners and ringed with gun batteries, barracks, tunnels and bunkers cut into the limestone. The most striking of them is on the north-west side of the harbour approach at Parja bay, about 13 nautical miles from Hvar Town: a submarine pen driven straight into the cliff, built so that a submarine could slip in from the sea and disappear from the sky.
The tunnel is tall enough for a conning tower and wide enough for a boat, and today that is exactly how you visit it. Your skipper eases in through the concrete mouth and the light drops away behind you; the water inside is deep, dark and still, the walls are bare rock and concrete, and the temperature falls a few degrees. It runs a good way into the hill, and at the far end you turn round and head back towards a rectangle of blue. It takes ten minutes and people talk about it all afternoon.
The water at the entrance is the other reason to stop. It is deep and exceptionally clear, and the ledges either side of the mouth make a natural jumping platform, so the tunnel has become a favourite for a swim as well as a history lesson. Snorkelling along the base of the cliff turns up the odd piece of rusting ironwork from the base.
The pen is one piece of a much larger picture. Around the island are gun emplacements on the headlands, the cave on Mount Hum from which Tito ran the Partisan campaign in 1944, and a network of roads and tunnels the army left behind when it handed the island back to civilian life. Most can be visited by car from Vis town; the submarine tunnel is the one you visit by boat.
On our Blue Cave & Island Vis tour the tunnel is a natural stop on the way into or out of Vis town, and it pairs well with lunch in Kut and a swim at Stončica. If you are planning your own Vis day, put it on the itinerary for the afternoon, when the sun is on the cliff and the entrance is at its most photogenic.
Cold War-era tunnels once used to hide Yugoslav navy submarines.
Cruise straight into the cavernous tunnel mouths from the sea.
A fascinating relic of Vis's strategic Adriatic past.
