Hvar, Croatia ? In the 1500s, builders raised walls for the Gothic palace of nobleman poet Petar Hektorovic at the city gates, but stopped before putting on the roof, for unknown reasons. Maybe they took a coffee break, got entranced by the local scenery and forgot to go back to work.

Hvar can do that to a person.

Children play at a well on the main square in the town of Hvar, Croatia. The piazza, or pjaca, is the center of activity in the town, with an array of outdoor cafes in which to pass the time.

Except for a few weeks in August when visitors cram the central Dalmatian coast, the island town avoids the clamor and gloss that increasingly permeate tourist spots, but is overlaid with a reflective languidness.

Hvar isn’t a deliberate anachronism, a fussily preserved simulacrum of the Old Days but the blandishments of modernity seem crude and irrelevant here.

No video screen, no matter how wide, could better the hues of the pellucid aquamarine Adriatic water and jagged ochre mountains; no pulsing electro-bleeps could complement the sights as well as the sound of church bells reverberating off sun-bleached limestone walls.

Hvar’s spirit is manifest even when choosing which ferry to take there from the mainland a speedy, sleek catamaran or a lumbering, aged tub.

The catamaran costs less, but even though it’s up to the minute and gives a smooth ride, it’s kind of low-class, confining its passengers to a cabin with cramped seating. The old boat takes twice as long but lets travelers wander the outside decks, taste the salt spray, rock with the waves and watch the propellers churn the sea into jade foam privileges worth the extra $1.40 and 60 minutes of travel time.

Within five steps after leaving the ship, any visitor toting luggage and looking even vaguely foreign will be in the thick of an old-fashioned Balkan practice women offering rooms in their homes. Those who choose this way of finding accommodation are quickly led up steep streets some of them hardly more than wide staircases through a warren of 16th-century houses flanked by potted palms, dusty blue-and-pink hydrangeas and sleeping dogs.

Whichever house the room turns out to be in, it is sure to be fastidiously clean and its proprietor happy to converse, whether or not she speaks your language.

Plaza sweet

After settling in, visitors tend to drift down to the town piazza (pjaca in Croatian), a waterside expanse of stone slabs polished by centuries of strolling feet. The square, like much of Hvar, is free of motor vehicles.

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There, they settle in at one of an array of outdoor cafes for reconnaissance and refreshment: the local schnapps called rakija and bitter coffee with sweet whipped cream are among the most popular choices.

This can take a good chunk out of the day, if the visitor follows local practice. A Croat spends longer sipping an 8-ounce soft drink than an American teen takes to dispose of a jeroboam of cola at a convenience store and seems to derive more pleasure from it.

The empty windows of the unfinished Hektorovic palace still loom over the pjaca, but other buildings testify that Hvar’s people were impressively diligent.

The pjaca’s ends are anchored by an armory both massive and graceful and by a cathedral whose belltower has so many arches and windows that it seems to have been woven in lace. Two centuries-old forts crouch amid the 1,000-foot slopes at the edge of town.

With its intact city walls, narrow streets and seaside position, Hvar can seem like a vest-pocket version of Dubrovnik at Croatia’s far southern tip. But it lacks that renowned city’s air of cultural sanctity and high seriousness is outdone by naked pleasure.

That’s literal sometimes. Two rocky islets just off Hvar are popular for providing rocky perches for those who love to sun and swim in the altogether.

Fishermen's boats and tourist yachts crowd the harbor on the Adriatic island of Hvar, Croatia.

But for all that is on display, Hvar is hardly a fleshpot; it’s sweet and even a little naive. Some watering holes play music, but never too loud to block conversation. Vendors selling seashells along the quay at night light their wares with candles, as if offering holy relics.

Others sell sachets of lavender, one of the island’s main crops, and the aroma lends the town the dainty air of a grandmother’s linen closet.

Hvar has a casino, but on a recent summer afternoon its entertainment was a Christian folk-group singing on the porch.

Simple entertainment

With its sea and sheer mountains, Hvar looks like a prime spot for “extreme sport” thrill-seekers, and visitors can indeed rent high-speed Jet Skis and hire parasailing jaunts but almost no one does.

People-watching, even in the full-clothing precincts away from the beaches, is superb entertainment, giving vivid glimpses of simple lives.

A man dozing in a doorway wakes up with a snort, waves at the cafe across the street and a waiter brings him coffee on a gleaming tray. On one of the town’s steepest streets, a man plays basketball with two tiny boys, cheerfully plunging down the precipitous steps to retrieve errant shots.

Getting there: Split, the jumping-off point for central Dalmatia’s islands, is connected by air, road and rail to Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. The highly scenic, seven-hour train trip costs $19 and the rail station is within a 10-minute walk from Split’s two ferry terminals.Lodging: A week in a hotel with one meal a day included can be arranged for as little as $210 through Croatian tourist agencies, including the foreigner-friendly General Turist. The Mengola agency in Hvar offers rooms in a renovated 15th-century building for $25 a night. Local people offering private rooms for around $14 cluster around every arriving boat and bus.Dining: The Adriatic staple of a pizza and a pint of beer runs about $7. A full dinner of local delicacies such as octopus salad and stuffed squid will cost around $30, including a local wine. Cevapcici, small spiced sausages, are the favorite fast food keeping in mind that in this region “fast” means the order will be ready in 15 minutes or so.Language: Linguists enjoy the Croatian mix of Italian, German and vowel-disdaining Slavic words. The less adventurous are comforted by the wide knowledge of English in any town big enough to have a hotel.Side trips: Buses for Stari Grad, Jelsa and Vrboska leave Hvar every couple of hours. Daylong boat excursions including Modra Spilja sea grotto, other sea caves and a stop in the supremely relaxed town of Komidza cost about $35. The Atlas agency is well-regarded for high-quality day trips to an array of sights.

The town’s jewel-box 17th-century theater, said to be the oldest public theater in Europe, indicates that people-watching has long been important to Hvar’s cultural fabric: most of the boxes on the theater’s perimeter offer little or no view of the stage, but fine views of the audience.

The theater, in somewhat poor repair, no longer used for productions, but Hvar has other cultural opportunities, including the museum and summer chamber music concerts at the Franciscan monastery.

Day-trip opportunities

Farther afield, the town of Vrboska an hour’s bus ride over the island’s 2,000-foot spine has an array of paintings by Titian and his contemporaries in its three churches, including an unusual church-fortress. Stari Grad, 12 miles from Hvar, features Hektorovic’s summer palace, which was actually finished.

Many choose a day trip by cabin cruiser to the island of Bisevo to see the famed Modra Spilja sea cave.

The entrance, a low dark opening in a sheer wall of rock, is so small that visitors have to crouch down in small rowboats and seems all the more spooky because it is guarded by a man and a dog in a boat, like the mythological Charon and Cerebrus at the gates to Hades.

But coming a little closer, they find that the man is contentedly sipping a midday beer and the dog is wagging his tail at the approach of potential new friends.

And the switch from fear to cheer continues inside, when the boat makes a sharp turn into a soaring chamber of shimmering blues and greens, lit by sun refracted through the water of a subsurface opening. Schools of fish scurry across the sea bed, clearly visible 50 feet below.

A supremely calming and silencing sight but on the voyage back, a couple of passengers in their 20s got restless and expressed a desire for something adrenaline-pumping.

A young crewman, whose tattoos and muscular build gave him the look of a classic thrill-seeker, told the visitors that the boat could tow them as they held on to a large rubber ball normally used as a bumper.

“But you shouldn’t do it,” he added quickly, instructing them in the Hvar spirit. “It’s too exciting. I did it once I was so scared!”