Hip Europeans are already overrunning a "new Riviera."
Except for Dubrovnik, where cruise ships stop for an afternoon or a night, Americans have barely discovered Croatia's Dalmatian Coast with its sun-soaked white-pebble beaches, restaurants and casinos, and ancient ruins.
While this small, strangely shaped country directly across the Adriatic Sea from Italy includes many beautiful inland areas, it is the Dalmatian Coast, especially the skinny strip of land between the cities of Split and Dubrovnik, that's getting most of the attention.
Its strategic location on an ancient trade route between Europe and the East has attracted waves of conquerors — including Greeks, Romans, Hungarians, Venetians, and Austrians — over the centuries.
The last battles fought here were during the bitter civil war between Croatia and Serbia that ravaged the countryside from 1991 to 1995 after the Republic of Yugoslavia was broken up into ethnic nations.  
Most signs of the war have been plastered over, although some villages still display the effects of bombings and hand-to-hand battles between neighbours.
At the north end of this coast is the city of Split, now a World Heritage Site. The heart of the city is its crumbling Old Town built within the well-preserved remains of a 10-acre summer palace constructed almost 2,000 years ago by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.  
In the Middle Ages, merchants built their homes on top of it. Many of them are still occupied.  
Shops, restaurants, cafes, offices, hotels, and vendor stalls also occupy the ruins, along with open squares and pedestrian-only cobblestone streets.  
Split also has many other historic structures, built largely during Venetian rule, a big harbour filled with yachts, a wide waterfront promenade, and about nine miles of beaches, most of them strewn with nude bathers.
You can hop a ferry from here to some of the islands that dot the Dalmatian Coast. The most popular is Hvar, 42 miles long and only a few miles wide.  The island has plenty of bucolic vistas, mountain roads with breathtaking hairpin turns, picturesque small communities, and fields of lavender and olive groves, and pine forests,
The medieval town of Hvar, surrounded by a 7th-century fortified wall, draws the idle rich, yachtsmen, and trendy celebrities to its miles of pebbled beaches, Venetian-style palaces, waterfront promenade, and steep narrow streets leading down to a 13th-century piazza bordered by a cathedral and a clock tower. The glitzy sun-and-sea bathers dine on seafood and barbecued lamb before heading for the clubs and bars at night.  
The southernmost star of this coast is Dubrovnik, once a Roman settlement, a major trading port, and a neutral city-state. It's now a fairytale city, one of the most beautiful in Europe despite having been heavily attacked during the war with Serbia. It’s famous for its thick 13th-century walls and towers that surround Stari Grad, the old town that is for pedestrians only.  
A walk along the walls offers a fantastic view of the city and the sea beyond. Houses made of pale limestone with red-tiled roofs are nestled among ancient churches, palaces, and convents along steep cobblestone streets that wind into tiny alleyways and marble-paved squares.  
It, too, has many miles of beaches where nude or topless sunbathing is the norm.  
If you land at Zagreb, Croatia's capital city, take a couple of days to saunter around this charming old-world city. Almost everything you want to see is close to its centre, the bustling Jelacic Square, where people stroll and pause for a cup of tea and a piece of apple strudel at one of the sidewalk cafes.  
From the square, dominated by a huge 800-year-old Gothic cathedral, you can walk to the Upper Town with its historic buildings, boutiques, monuments, theatres, and a pedestrian-only avenue, and to the Lower Town that features museums, parks, and posh shops.  
Not to be missed is the Dolac market, an open-air outlet for produce, fish, meat, arts and crafts, or the Monument of Tolerance and its neo-renaissance Mirogoj Cemetery.  
As you travel down to the coast, you might stop at Kumrovec to see the childhood home of the late Yugoslavia dictator, Tito, and visit an open-air museum showing how the people lived at the end of the 19th century.  
Next comes Turang, scheduled to be a museum commemorating the savage invasion by the Serbs and Bosnians a few years ago.
You can spend a full day in Plitvice Jezera National Park, the biggest tourist attraction in Croatia after the Adriatic coast. The 12,000-acre heavily forested park is studded with hundreds of waterfalls and streams that connect 16 small turquoise lakes.  
The lakes and waterfalls are lined with travertine, constantly changing porous white limestone formed by sedimentation. The land is crisscrossed with gravel paths and boardwalks, allowing visitors to walk along the lakes and around or under the waterfalls. You can stay overnight at one of the park's rustic hotels and eat at a typical regional restaurant — an excellent one is the Licka Kuca.