Alfred Hitchcock is supposed to have said that Zadar has the most beautiful sunset in the world, and the people of the town have taken him at his word. The city sits on a narrow peninsula on the Dalmatian coast, with the sea on three sides and the island of Ugljan across the channel, and the sun drops into the water in a long fire of orange and pink. The best place to watch is the waterfront promenade at the end of the old town, where a pair of modern works of art, the Sea Organ and the Greeting to the Sun, turn the shoreline into an instrument and a light show.
The Sea Organ, designed by the architect Nikola Bašić and opened in 2005, uses pipes under the marble steps that are played by the waves, producing a low, shifting chord that never quite repeats. People sit on the steps with their feet near the water and listen as the light goes. It is oddly moving, and it brings the whole town to the shore every evening.
Zadar is also an ancient place, with a Roman forum, a round pre-Romanesque church called Saint Donatus, built in the ninth century from stones taken from the forum, and a long, long tradition of making maraschino, a cherry liqueur that was once the town's great export. Everything is within a short walk, along marble-paved lanes closed to traffic.
For riders, Zadar is a stop on the Adriatic Highway, known to Croats as the Magistrala, which runs for hundreds of kilometres along the coast, with views of islands, limestone cliffs and a very blue sea. North of Zadar the road crosses the Maslenica bridge and runs under the Velebit mountains, where the bora wind can blow hard enough to close the road to motorcycles. Check conditions on windy days. Summer traffic can be heavy, with campervans and queues in the villages, so early starts are rewarded.
With seventy-one thousand people, Zadar has plenty of fuel and food, and fish restaurants near the harbour. Parking in the old town is limited, so use a car park outside the walls.