Behind the Iron Curtain, in a Catholic country run by communists, a swimming instructor from Munich built what became one of the largest naturist resorts in Europe—on a signed German tourism contract, with the blessing of the League of Communists and over the objection of the Church. Most nudist travelers have heard of Cap d'Agde and Sylt. Almost nobody outside Croatia knows the stranger, better-documented story of the place that came first. Here it is.
The Place
A naturist resort on the northwest Istrian coast, near the small town of Vrsar, built around a pine-covered islet at the mouth of the Lim Bay. The grounds run to roughly 100 hectares (about 250 acres) with some five kilometers of coastline; the original islet is still linked to the mainland by a bridge. Since the 2025 season the resort has been split by a two-meter wall into two sectors: a naturist side toward the bay and a larger clothed side at the town entrance. It opens seasonally, late April into October.
The Story
Local legend says the first nude bather on Koversada was Casanova, who supposedly hid out at Vrsar in the 18th century while dodging the Venetian authorities and stripped off on the island. The documented story is younger, and it begins with a man in a car. Rudolf Halbig, a swimming instructor from Munich and a naturist, spent the late 1950s driving the Adriatic coast looking for somewhere West German naturists could take a holiday, and found an uninhabited pine islet beside a sleepy Istrian town that lived on wine, olive oil, and hazelnuts. Halbig ran a travel agency, Miramare, described in period sources as the first agency in the world to specialize in naturist travel. His local partner was Mate Restović, who directed the Vrsar tourist society. The two struck a deal in 1960, and an agreement signed in April 1961 committed Halbig to send up to four hundred German naturists a year. The first guests came in 1961, ferried out to the island by boat. Demand outran the islet fast, and in 1965 the resort spread onto the mainland shore.
Koversada is widely credited as Europe’s first commercial naturist camp, the model that turned Yugoslavia into a naturist-tourism capital of the continent.
