Pharos
Modern Stari Grad sits on top of Pharos, the Greek town founded on the island of Hvar in 384 BCE. The settlement was established by people from the Aegean island of Paros, in a bay that opens toward the fertile plain behind it. The town has been lived in continuously, so its ancient history is not separated from the modern one by an empty field.
That continuity is both a gift and a complication. The streets of Stari Grad preserve the location of the old town, but later houses, roads, and utilities cover much of the archaeology. Pharos is found in fragments beneath daily life.
A colony beside a cultivated plain
The Greek settlers did not choose the bay only for ships. The land behind it could be divided, worked, and connected to the town. The Stari Grad Plain still preserves the ancient landscape division associated with the Greek settlement, including long parcels and field boundaries that survived through later centuries.
The plain and the town belonged together. Pharos needed food, water, labour, and access to the sea. The fields needed a settlement where produce could be stored, exchanged, and moved. The colony reorganised land and work as well as building houses beside the harbour.
The town's position also placed it among communities that had already lived on Hvar. The foundation of Pharos was a Greek act of colonisation, but it took place in an inhabited Adriatic world. Archaeology records contact and change more readily than it records every negotiation behind them.
The remains beneath Stari Grad
The modern centre conceals much of the ancient plan, but excavations and finds have revealed a long sequence of occupation. The Stari Grad Museum's archaeological collection covers the prehistoric settlement, the Greek city of Pharos from the fourth to the second century BCE, and the later Roman and late antique town of Pharia.
The names changed as the political world changed. When Greek rule gave way to Roman power, buildings were altered, objects were replaced, and the settlement continued to function in the same sheltered position.
This is why the site cannot be read from one surviving monument. A piece of wall in a modern courtyard, a coin in a museum case, and the shape of the harbour each reveal a different part of the town. The ancient city is distributed through the present one.
From Pharos to Pharia
The Greek period is best known for the foundation in 384 BCE and the town's development during the following centuries. Later, the settlement entered the Roman sphere and was known as Pharia. The Roman phase is represented in the museum collections by pottery, coins, stone monuments, and other material from the town and island.
There is no single moment when Pharos stopped being Pharos. Political names are useful for organising history, but residents did not experience a city as a textbook heading. They inherited streets, land, harbour facilities, and family property while adapting to new authorities.
The survival of Stari Grad also makes the usual idea of a ruin misleading. Ancient foundations are not the final layer of the place. Medieval and early modern buildings stand above them, and the waterfront has continued to serve later communities. The town has been repaired more often than abandoned.
A city still in use
The Stari Grad Museum cares for objects from the town and its surroundings, while research continues in the historic centre and on the plain. Recent archaeological work in public spaces has added to the evidence for a settlement used across many centuries.
The ancient grid is therefore not visible as a complete diagram. It has to be traced through excavations, old boundaries, architectural fragments, and the relationship between the town and the fields. The result is less dramatic than a city preserved by disaster, but it is closer to how most ancient places survived: in use, repair, and partial memory.
Pharos remains under Stari Grad because the Greek foundation did not end the history of the bay. It began a town that kept changing, with later residents building over the older city and leaving just enough of it for archaeology to follow.