Adriatic Sea has over 1000 islands and therefore it is often called the "nautical paradise". Fully enjoy your holiday, rent a sailboat, motorboat, catamaran, powerboat or yacht and see famous Kornati islands, Dubrovnik, Islands of Vis, Brac, Hvar, Mljet, Krk, Cres, Rab, Losinj etc. Choose between more than 450 skippered boat rentals in Croatia.

The west shore is generally low, merging, in the northwest, into the marshes and lagoons on either hand of the protruding delta of the river Po, the sediment of which has pushed forward the coastline for several miles within historic times -- Adria is now some distance from the shore.

On islands within one of the lagoons opening from the Gulf of Venice, Venice has its unique situation. Other notable cities on the Italian coast are Trieste, Ravenna, Rimini, Ancona, Pescara, Bari and Brindisi.

The east coast is generally bold and rocky, with many islands. South of the Istrian Peninsula, which separates the Gulfs of Venice and Gulf of Trieste from the Bay of Kvarner, the island-fringe of the east coast extends as far south as Dubrovnik.

The islands, which are long and narrow (the long axis lying parallel with the coast of the mainland), rise rather abruptly to elevations of a few hundred feet, with the exception of a few larger islands like Brač (Vidova gora, 778 m) or the peninsula Pelješac (St. Ilija, 961 m). There are over a thousand islands in the Adriatic, 66 of which are inhabited.

On the mainland, notably in the magnificent inlet of the Gulf of Kotor (Boka Kotorska, Bocche di Cattaro; named after the town of Kotor), lofty mountains often fall directly to the sea.