The Illyrian walls
Massive unworked blocks beneath houses still lived in.
Honza Beran — CC BY 2.5 · Gaius Cornelius — CC BY-SA 4.0 · August Dominus — CC BY-SA 4.0 · August Dominus — CC BY-SA 4.0
**The oldest settlement on Brač**, a small inland village with no sea view — which is itself evidence of its age: the coastal towns were built later, when the sea became safe. The site''s age can be read in its walls, layer over layer. The village''s foundations are **massive Illyrian walls** of unworked stone blocks, some going back to the first millennium BC. Above them is **Roman** building, then **medieval** towers, then houses of the Venetian period — sometimes all in a single structure. Its best-known building is the **Radojković tower**, Illyrian at its base, Roman in its body and medieval at the top, now holding the **Brač Island Museum**. The village also has a **Roman mausoleum**, said locally to be that of the empress **Julia**, daughter of Augustus — an attribution that is **not established** but is firmly held in local tradition. Note: the village is very small with only a few dozen residents, and the visit takes an hour or two. Note: **the museum''s hours are seasonal and short** — you may find it shut outside summer.
Massive unworked blocks beneath houses still lived in.
Three civilisations in one building, holding the island museum.
No sea view — evidence it predates the coast being safe.
Škrip — about 9 km south-east of Supetar
The **Illyrians** were a group of peoples who occupied the eastern Adriatic coast and western Balkans **before the Romans arrived** — at least a thousand years before the Slavs. They left no written texts, so what is known of them comes from **their remains** and from what Greeks and Romans wrote about them. Their best-known survivals are **hillforts** (*gradine*): hilltop settlements ringed by walls of massive unworked stone blocks, found across Dalmatia and its islands. ⚠ What you see at Škrip is exactly that — an Illyrian wall becoming the foundation of a Roman and then a medieval house, a pattern repeated throughout the region. ⚠ They resisted Rome for centuries, their resistance ending with the Great Illyrian Revolt of AD 6-9, after which they were gradually absorbed into the empire.
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