This lovely and not so small a place, nested along the shore of a deeply indented port. The first houses were built on the north-eastern shore, later the village stretched across to the southern shore, and then beyond the port. Nowadays, Milna is the main nautical centre of the island, thanks to a long waterfront built along the northern and partly southern shore of the port, two marinas, the waterfront in front of the former sardine factory and a petrol station.
There are three coves in the Milna port. The most deeply indented Pantera Cove stretches to southeast. An ACI marina, with moors on both sides of the cove, occupies large part of it. The Žalo Cove is hidden on the northern side, and so is the Vlaška Cove, only some five hundred metres to the west. The waterfront and the centre of Milna are between Pantera and Žalo, on the eastern shore. There is also a church, Polaca square with a staircase, and Sridnja and Gornja lanes, quiet and intimate, with a row of old stone houses, stretch parallel to the waterfront.
Milna, the former main island port, flourishing at the time of sailing ships, is surrounded by a big bay that provided shelter to many ships in times of storm, so that it was named Valle di Mille Navi by the Venetians. The cove belonged to the inhabitants of Nerežišće, and in the surroundings were shepherds’ huts. In wintertime, on the adjacent grounds, the shepherds of Nerežišće kept kettle, that grazed the Brač uplands. In contrast to most of other Brač settlements at shore, there are no traces of any Roman farming nor remains of Early Christian places of worship, so its history is traced back only to the period when the pirates’ threat faded away under Venetian administration.
The place sprang at the end of the 16th century when a noble family Ceranić, of Nerežišće, built a tower and a small church in the cove, their own waterfront, and houses beside it, which were used as warehouses for wine and oil that are exported therefrom, and built also by the inhabitants of the Blaca hermitage. Houses by the sea are built also by other wealthier inhabitants of Nerežišće, turning the cove gradually into the island’s main port, and the centre of seafaring. Ploughmen’s and shepherds’ huts are located above them, slightly up the hill. The place witnessed a particularly strong development during the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was the centre of the Brač trade. Many palaces and a beautiful baroque church (in 1783) were built.
