Piran occupies a narrow peninsula at the tip of Slovenia's 46 km of coastline, and it looks and feels Venetian because for five centuries it was — the Republic of Venice held the town from 1283 until 1797. The result is a compact medieval centre of pale stone, shuttered windows and lanes barely wide enough for two people, wrapped by the sea on three sides and by 15th-century walls on the fourth.
The centre of it all is Tartini Square, an oval of white stone named after the violinist Giuseppe Tartini, who was born on it in 1692. Above the square stands the Church of St George, whose free-standing campanile is a scaled-down copy of the bell tower in St Mark's Square, Venice; climbing it gives the view that most people come for — terracotta roofs running down to the Adriatic, with the Italian and Croatian coasts visible on a clear day. The town walls above the centre are the other climb worth making, and cost only a couple of euros.
Piran is car-free in the historic core, and this catches visitors out. Drivers are directed to the Fornače garage outside town and take a frequent free shuttle in — trying to drive to Tartini Square wastes an hour. From Ljubljana it is about 120 km, roughly 1 hour 45 minutes by car or bus. Half a day covers the square, the campanile and the walls; a full day lets you eat properly, since this is the part of Slovenia where the food turns Adriatic — grilled fish, olive oil from the surrounding hills, and Refošk and Malvazija from the Istrian vineyards.
