Stari Grad has a proud sailing tradition, including some rather unusual features, including a strong connection with the island of Lampedusa, as explained by the local tourist board:
Around 150 years ago, Tomažo Bonaparte, a Hvar ship-owner, went looking for sardines and arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa, not far from the African coast.
After they heard about the successful fishing there, other Hvar ship-owners followed in his footsteps in the years that followed. The sailboat fleet sailed to Lampedusa every year, until autumn 1905 when the last Hvar sailboat “Giorgio”, captained by Frano Maroević from Stari Grad returned to the island of Hvar. On Lampedusa, they organized sardine fishing, salted them and put them into wooden barrels transporting them in their ships to Black Sea ports and the eastern Mediterranean, where they sold them and returned to the island loaded mainly with corn. Some of them remained on Lampedusa and their descendants still live there.
