A Croatian Villa Born From a Sailboat

Guests here often return year after year, asking for the same suite, the same dishes, the same corner of the terrace. On the Croatian island of Mali Lošinj, in the stunning Istria and Kvarner region, that kind of loyalty says more about a house than any photograph could.

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Contessa Luxury Retreat

5 Bedrooms – 12 Guests

From EUR 14,000 per week to price on request

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Built Around a Name

Named After a Record Breaker

The villa takes its name from Contessa Hilda, the most celebrated Croatian sailboat of the early twentieth century: twelve sails, and a world record set in 1906 for the fastest crossing from Europe to South America. The property was built to carry that name: a Roman courtyard, closed to the road, open at its centre. From the road, the house barely reveals itself. Step through the gate and the courtyard opens completely, full privacy from outside, no sense of enclosure within.

Rooms With a Past

Five suites, five names — each one drawn from the island’s own history. The master suite honours Aldebrand Petrina, the captain behind the 1906 record, a man who spent just nine months on land over 32 years of marriage and fathered four children. His portrait, alongside his wife’s, hangs in the bedroom, and the linen bears his embroidered name, as it does in each suite.

The second belongs to Spiridon Gjurčić, the astronomer who identified the observatories of Mars and Venus; the island still has one of its own.

The third is Ambroz Haračić, the professor who travelled to Vienna and persuaded Kaiser Franz Ferdinand to fund 250,000 pine trees for Mali Lošinj. He had identified a combination of sea air, pine, and wind that produced what he argued was the cleanest air in Europe. The Kaiser agreed. Those trees are now counted in millions.

The fourth, St. Martin, sits on the ground floor with its own kitchen and private terrace: fully soundproofed, suited to older guests or anyone who prefers a quieter arrangement away from the rest of the house. The fifth takes its name from Nikola Tesla and is built around an office: designed for those who need to stay connected, and do it properly.

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Staffed Like a Hotel

Before You Land

Elena Ljubić, owner of Contessa, spent twenty years in hospitality: in agencies, in hotel management, as a director of sales.

The service at Contessa begins before guests arrive. Once a reservation is confirmed, the concierge starts to work: flights to the island, transfers from the mainland, the logistics of reaching Mali Lošinj. By the time guests land, the journey is already handled.

A detailed questionnaire follows: dietary preferences, morning routines, wellness interests, activity preferences. From those answers, the concierge builds a bespoke itinerary for the stay, designed so that a week at Contessa takes in the island without the stay feeling rushed.

Twenty people support the operation: private chef, butler, property manager, 24/7 concierge, housekeeping, masseurs, maintenance. Guests tend to see five of them in a day, beginning with the butler, who unpacks on arrival.

The Island on the Plate

A guest who mentions they only cook with an air fryer and use no oil will find one in the kitchen. Every preference from the questionnaire becomes a standing instruction, delivered by a team that is entirely Croatian.

When guests find their way to the kitchen bar, they hear the island’s own stories from the people those stories belong to.

Classes form without being announced: someone asks a question about what is in the pan, someone else pulls up a stool, and an afternoon takes shape around a recipe. The chef makes the dishes of the island: slow-cooked lamb, freshly caught fish, a ragu di calamari that guests ask for by name on return visits.

The chef also makes Šnenokle (the Croatian Floating Islands Dessert), a treat so tied to childhood memory that one guest ate a portion the chef had prepared and wept. He was sixty-five. He had not tasted it since childhood. Some come back year after year and ask for the same dishes.

Something for Every Age

A Floor Designed for Children

The lower level includes a dormitory with five beds and a daily programme from 4pm to 7pm: treasure hunts, art classes, swimming instruction, football sessions, led by a dedicated member of staff. Families with young children arrive to find they don’t need a nanny.

The Week at a Glance

Across a single stay, each member of the group finds a different version of the week.

For whom	What’s available
Adults	Private chef, butler, massage, sauna, jacuzzi, private cinema, equipped office
Children	Dedicated dormitory, daily activities, swimming and sport instruction
Groups	Cooking classes, island excursions, cycling, organised experiences
Everyone	24/7 concierge, pre-arrival itinerary, full staff throughout

The Island Beyond the Gates

Air With a History

Mali Lošinj, the island’s main hub, lies a short drive from the villa. Large enough to remain vibrant year-round, yet close enough to visit between lunch and an afternoon swim.

Haračić’s nineteenth-century research brought the Habsburg royal family here for recuperation, giving the island its lasting reputation for clean air. They kept a villa in the bay of Čikat, a sheltered inlet of old palaces where no new construction has been permitted, and the island’s character as a place of rest has not shifted since.

1,244 Islands, One Mountain Hut

Croatia counts more than 1,200 islands, and Mali Lošinj sits at the heart of one of the most beautiful archipelagos among them. From the mountain overlooking Lošinj and the neighbouring island of Cres, the view stretches across the scattered islands of the archipelago as far as the eye can see. Guests who arrived from St. Moritz stood at the summit and said they had never seen anything like it. For those who prefer to stay closer to ground level, the island has its own observatory.

Other experiences sit closer to the ground: sheep-shearing mornings that end with roast island lamb, workshops where guests make lip balms from local botanicals and carry them home, cooking classes with recipes people spend the flight back trying to reconstruct. The island also has the Ljubičić Tennis Academy, founded by Ivan Ljubičić, who coached Roger Federer, with spring and autumn bringing the best conditions on the courts.

A Different Kind of Time

What a Day Looks Like

The most valuable thing, as Elena puts it, is time. Most guests arrive with very little of it: the demands of work, school, sport, business leaving the day already spoken for before it begins.

At Contessa, that changes. A day might begin with a swim (the sea is fifty metres from the gate), followed by a shower in the garden with a view over the water. Brunch arrives on the terrace. The afternoon is for the spa: massage, sauna, the pool. By evening, the chef and butler have set a four-course dinner with wine pairing; the night closes around the rooftop jacuzzi and bar, open to the sky.

For those who need to stay connected, the villa has a fully equipped office; the butler handles lunch while they work. The concierge has handled everything else before guests arrive: where to go, what to do, how to spend the week. What remains is the day itself, built around the people in the group.

Guests describe what happens: the phone goes down, and people who move in separate orbits at home find themselves at the same table, at the same pace, for the first time in months.

The Quieter Season

The island slows in October. The restaurants quieten, the harbour empties, and the villa takes up more of the day: the sauna, the private cinema, the kitchen, the people in the group. The island stops competing with the house for attention.

Contessa runs every day of the year. The guests who arrive in January leave as satisfied as those who come in August. Several come back for both.

The place they return to was built in a single year, on a bare piece of land, from one rule: everything had to have a reason. The name, the suites, the portraits on the walls, the pine trees on the hillside, the dessert on the table. It shows.

And perhaps that is the quiet invitation here: to come once without expectation, and leave with the sense that you’ve already found a place worth returning to.