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At the foot of the bell-tower, the old lady pocketed two thousand dinars in exchange for the bland assurance that on a clear day you could see Venice.

Well, fifty miles is an awful lot of Adriatic, but with a haze over the horizon, her claim was unlikely to be tested very soon. Anyway, I was happy enough to clamber up the steep old ladders, followed by my companion who had luckily chosen a trouser-suit instead of a skirt that morning.

Four storeys higher, we stood in the open loggia, looking westward to the misty sea through twin arches made of the same white Istrian stone that built the Doge’s Palace. Just overhead four great bells, streaked with green age, awaited their cue.

North and south offered more of the same. But crossing to the east face of the belfry, we could gaze down on a warren of red rooftops and shuttered facades, descending through tiny pathways and cobbled steps to the waterfront, a scene unchanged for centuries. Then it was down the ladders again, and out under the atrium into the finest basilica to be seen on this coast - a little camera obscura of mosaics and Gothic frescoes, touched with gold. Emerging at length, I stole a last look at the campanile, a square pillar of quiet majesty, topped by a small red spire.

It may not have been a clear day. But I could see Venice.

The Istria that most people know is the coast - not surprisingly, since the bathing is safe and clean, and in August the temperature can hit the high eighties. This spectacular fortified shoreline has fallen to Romans, Franks, Venetians, Austrians and Italians, and not until 1954 was it fully integrated into Yugoslavia. At least one English author still insists on using Italian names only on this coast, while the Times correspondent in Vienna refers to it a little oddly as the Austrian Riviera.

It was as a Venetian province that Istria acquired its familiar character, and the campanile we just visited - St. Euphrasius at Porec - is one of many that are modelled closely on San Marco in Venice.

Porec is deeply symbolic of Istrian culture. The main streets are still based on the Roman grid, and only inches underground are the original paving stones, stubbornly indestructible. To connoisseurs, the basilica is the last glory of Rome touching hands with the new blossom of Byzantium. Gothic palaces, Romanesque houses, medieval walls… these form a splendid backdrop for water-sports around the pebble-and-rock beaches. And local squid stuffed with mussels in white wine is as good as anything for miles around.

These Venetian ports with their myriad roofs piling up steeply towards the central campanile could almost be islands. In the case of Koper and Rovinj, they actually were islands, and the embankments that linked them to the coast were easy to defend.

Koper was the old Istrian capital, and five of its mayors went on to become Doges of Venice. Although now overshadowed by tower blocks, its main square is the most impressive of any, and some fine old streets radiate from it. Perhaps more rewarding is Rovinj, an unusually well-favoured and fertile location, where writers and artists love to entertain all year, and little ferries whisk you round the secluded islets in the bay. We could say that Rovinj is like Porec, only more so. Even more medieval alleys darting left and right, and a bell-tower so Venetian that you can almost hear the gondoliers. On top of this campanile stands St. Euphemia with her navigator’s wheel, doubling as a weathervane. For three centuries, seafaring folk have turned their faces trustingly towards her, to see where the wind is coming from. She does not fail them.

Cultural mosaics are one thing. But I must confess to a somewhat different vein of curiosity as we first came through the Aleppo pines and on down to the bustling quayside. For Rovinj, out of some mysterious channel of hearsay, has acquired a name for the beauty of its women. An hour’s walk did not seem to confirm this, however. Most of them looked like nice ordinary Italian girls of the familiar type - there is in fact a large Italian community here - relieved by a few Serbs who looked anything but glamorous. Only later did I learn that Rovinj is the local capital of naturism, with no fewer than four discreet little colonies dotted around the islands. So, back to square one. More famous than any of these other ports is Pula, the greatest open air museum in Yugoslavia. Its Roman amphitheatre is in better condition than any other still standing, and it remains a popular festival venue to this day. Augustus started it. Then Vespasian decided to enlarge it as an excuse for frequent visits to a local slave-girl whom he later married. In Venetian times, prominent men started carrying off the stones to build new villas, until stopped by an early conservationist who is still commemorated on a plaque.

Closer to the old citadel and forum stands the Golden Arch, so beautifully carved with dolphins, sphinxes and winged victories that Michelangelo stopped to sketch it. Of passing interest is the corner-house beside it where the young James Joyce taught English. Pula’s mixed fortunes have included an outbreak of malaria in 1638 that reduced it to just three local landowners, and an acute dependence on good water supply. It was by cutting off the water that the Romans first took the port from the original Histri tribe. And only last year, the town’s most sumptuous hotel narrowly missed the coveted Double A rating (equivalent to an imaginary 6-star service) because it failed to cope with a local drought.

This hotel - the Histria - is not in the town centre, but a mile or two South, on a calm bay with plenty of room for swimming pools, marinas, tennis courts, playgrounds and car-parks. Increasingly this is the pattern of Istrian hotel developments, while to the North of Porec, an entirely new village - Cervar - offers self-catering apartments and villas, with shopping and all facilities. A little light commuting is no great price to pay for saving the infrastructure of Istria’s cherished seaports. For this is the Istria that most people still want to know.

If Mary Stewart has not yet written an Istrian novel, then I command her to do so. For just up from the coast lie a region of enigmatic lights and shadows, where friendly wine-villages blend into a harsh desert of snake-infested ruins, full of Illyrian thunder. This is the Istria most people miss, and it is not just travel-snobbery when I say I prefer it.

They call it the Karst, this austere limestone plateau, bubbling with streams one moment, dry and unforgiving the next. With sharp changes in soil and vegetation, there is no typical scenery. At some points, you could be crossing the Sussex Downs, or when the red roofs come into sight, North Germany. Except when you approach one of the Istrian hill-villages. Then once again, Venice comes into the picture, Venice and enchantment.

To call Motovun a village seems odd, as it was once a fortified city, whose battlements still firmly dominate the Mirna valley. Yet a village it is, with a single cobbled street ascending to the little square where children learn the intricate ‘Balon’ - a rotate-and-revolve combination that looks deceptively easy and graceful, once mastered. The Mirna, however, was not in a dancing mood that midsummer day - a sluggish little stream barely visible at the bottom of the valley.

Far more eloquent is Pazin, a fortress rearing up proudly above a dramatic forested gorge. Once it bore the brunt of the fighting between Venice and Austria. In the last war, its part was more symbolic. The day in 1943 when Istrian leaders met in Pazin and voted to break away from Fascist Italy in favour of Tito’s new Yugoslavia must have warmed the blood like the strong red Teran that grows just down the hill.

You can probably see further into that chasm in winter, when oak and hornbeam have shed their leaves. But even now you can just make out the fast-flowing Fojba, hurtling into a cleft, hundreds of feet below. All round it, a huge wall of rock has been washed into fantastic shapes, and each ledge and crevice is thick with greenery. It is like looking at a Gustave Doré print, and feeling that the reality could never be as magical. Only it is.

But of course, I am not the first man to stare in wonder at that plunging torrent. The young Dante did it, and it became his Inferno. The Fojba reminds us of yet a third Istria: the one that nobody has ever seen. For that wild stream rushes underground as though urgently on its way somewhere and is never heard of again. Far away to the west, a dried-up river bed leading to the Limski Canal suggests a likely outlet, but deep underground in that kingdom of fathomless rock passages, a decisive shift has happened - a drama without words - dispatching the Fojba to some unimagined doom.

Between hill-villages, the major roads are better than expected, but anything else is gravel, if that. This means that a thorough tour of the Karst will involve a fair amount of duplication. But there are bonuses. My impatience at having to re-trace the Porec-Pazin route disappeared like magic when I was reminded that we now had time to call in at Beram. And I have never been so glad of a half-hour detour.

The tiny church of St. Mary, all on its own, contains some of the most exquisite frescoes you will ever see. It is like a tiny lighted box, painted on every interior surface with 500-year old images of life and death, much of it against recognisable Istrian scenes. The Visitation of the Magi, the forbidden love of Adam, the Dance of Death. It can be hard to summon up religious sentiment to order, but I defy you to remain unmoved by the message so lovingly painted into that small, humble church in the forest.

Istrians are deeply religious. Even villages as small as Zminj and Svetvincenat rate a Bishop apiece. Zminj is one of the few hill-villages whose population is actually growing, and you can detect an air of optimism in the well-kept streets and houses. As for Svetvincenat, we hadn’t driven halfway round the square before a dapper little fellow with a moustache came bounding up and invited us to ‘Marenda’. He had once driven a long-distance coach on which my companion was the guide. I think he must have been on holiday, for Yugoslavs work from seven to three, and Marenda (elevenses) stops at ten-thirty sharp. This one didn’t.

As for me, I had no business to go drinking that morning, a missed connection at Zagreb having pressed my schedule into a tight concertina. But on came the local white wine and the smoked ham, dried specially in the cold ‘Bora’ wind that blows across the Karst in January. And everything fine and welcoming about Istria seemed to come together at that moment. The laughter of friends, the heavy cooking-pans suspended above raised hearths, the climbing sun, and a light breeze through the pines.

A minute earlier, I was looking at my watch, fearing that I was missing Istria. A minute later, I knew I’d found it.

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