Vrbnik is a settlement and municipality in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on the eastern side of the island of Krk, facing Novi Vinodolski on the mainland. It sits on a cliff that rises steeply about fifty meters above the sea, bordered to the east by the Vinodol Channel. It lies about eight kilometers from Punat and Dobrinj, and around twenty-eight kilometers from the Krk Bridge. The municipality is undulating and hilly in the south, with peaks over 400 meters in altitude; its shores are often steep and inaccessible, especially in the southern part, while they are more accessible toward the north.
Vrbnik is first mentioned in written sources, together with Dobrinj, in the Glagolitic charter of Dragoslav dated January 1, 1100. It then came under Venetian influence in 1118, although the Counts of Krk ruled it until 1480. In 1388 it received the Vrbnik Statute, written in the Croatian language and Glagolitic script; it is the second oldest among Croatian statutes, right after the Vinodol Statute, and devotes most of its provisions to criminal law. The statute has not survived in its original form but in a transcript made by the priest Grgur Žašković in 1526, now held in the National and University Library in Zagreb. Vrbnik was a Glagolitic center for centuries; the Vrbnik Glagolitic scriptorium produced the largest number of Glagolitic manuscripts surviving today – for example, Blaž Baromić wrote the Mavar Breviary there.
Today, the most important economic sector is agriculture, primarily viticulture. The Vrbnik field in the hinterland of the settlement, alongside the Baška valley, is the largest area of fertile land on the island; across roughly one hundred and fifty hectares, the indigenous žlahtina grape variety is grown, with an annual production of around 1.2 million bottles. The higher-quality wine is exported to Western European countries and the USA, and the Valomet sparkling wine is also produced, with its bottles stored in the sea in front of Vrbnik to mature. Among Krk’s seven municipalities, tourism is the least developed in Vrbnik despite favorable conditions; with one smaller hotel and a modest number of apartments, fishing and seafaring were not primary activities due to the changeable conditions in the Velebit Channel toward which the settlement gravitates.
