The four questions that decide it
Everything else is detail. Answer these and the shortlist writes itself.
1. Do you want to walk into town? Only Porton Biondi puts the old town within about ten minutes on foot. Everywhere else means a bike, a bus, a taxi boat or a car. If your ideal evening is dinner in the centro storico and a stroll back, that decision is already made.
2. Are you travelling with a dog? This removes two of the eight immediately: Val Saline and Valalta accept no pets at all. Amarin and Polari go furthest the other way, with dog beaches and dog showers, and Mon Perin has pet beaches in both its zones plus an agility park.
3. How much activity do you want? Polari and Amarin are built around kids clubs, pools and entertainment programmes โ brilliant with children, exhausting without them. Ulika deliberately has neither. Everything else sits in between.
4. How far out will you go for value and space? The sites nearest town cost the most per night and are the busiest in August. Mon Perin, twenty minutes down the coast at Bale, trades proximity for 9.5 km of shoreline and far fewer people.
What the beaches are actually like
No campsite here has a sandy beach, because Istria does not have sandy beaches. What you get is rock, pebble and poured-concrete swimming platforms, usually shaded by pines, with clear water and easy ladder entry. Amarin's main beach carries a Blue Flag; Polari runs for nearly two kilometres; Porton Biondi is a locals' favourite that happens to sit below a campsite. Bring swim shoes for the pebble stretches and you will not think about it again. For the wider picture, see our guide to the best beaches in Rovinj.
When to come
July and August book out months ahead, cost the most, and put you shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Europe. Late May, June, September and early October give you warm sea, working pools and a fraction of the crowd. Most sites open in April and close in early October โ Ulika is the outlier at 10 March to 31 October, and Amarin runs to 8 November, so those two are your options either side of the season.
