Lokrum Island

This island is cursed. Or at least, that's what the Benedictine monks ensured when they were forcibly expelled in 1798. According to local legend, on their final night the monks donned their hooded robes, lit candles, and walked a slow circle around the entire island, dripping wax onto the ground while chanting: "Whosoever claims Lokrum for his own personal pleasure shall be damned." Every subsequent private owner of the island reportedly met misfortune. The Habsburgs bought it, and their empire collapsed. A local nobleman who tried to develop it went bankrupt. Coincidence, probably. But nobody in Dubrovnik seems willing to test the theory.

The island sits just 600 metres off the Old Port and has been inhabited since at least 1023, when grateful citizens built a Benedictine monastery after a fire threatened to consume the city. The monastery complex still stands, though it was later converted into a summer residence by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg — the same Maximilian who would become Emperor of Mexico and be executed by firing squad in 1867. The curse keeps receipts.

Today Lokrum is a nature reserve, car-free and hotel-free, covered in dense Mediterranean forest, Aleppo pines, and exotic botanical gardens planted with specimens from around the world. There's a small saltwater lake called the Dead Sea where swimmers float in unusually warm, calm water. Peacocks roam the island freely, outnumbering the human visitors on quiet days.

Game of Thrones fans will recognise the monastery grounds as Qarth, where several key Daenerys scenes were filmed. The show's Iron Throne sits in the monastery for photo opportunities. It is deeply weird to see a prop from a fantasy show about dragons in a real 11th-century monastery on a cursed island. But that is Lokrum in a nutshell: strange, beautiful, and genuinely unlike anywhere else.