Later it served as the seat of island and town authorities until 1905. Pag has several preserved family houses and palazzi with Renaissance facades, portals and coats-of-arms of the local aristocratic families. On a narrow isthmus to the south of the town there are several old salt storehouses, some of dating back to the 16th century. An important figure in Croatian history is Pag-born Jesuit Bartul Kašić – writer, translator and the author of the first Croatian grammar book (1599).

Today, Pag has a population of about 9,000. The main sources of employment are the salt and cheese industries and tourism.

PAG NEEDLEPOINT LACE appeared at the same time as the laces of the eastern Mediterranean, but experienced a very different development. The traditional costume of the island of Pag confirms the interpretation that the needlepoint lacemaking is an autochthonous cultural treasure of the Croatian Adriatic. It is based on knowledge of the skills of the so-called white embroidery: cutwork (izriz), woven hemstitch (rasplet), and holly stitch (priplet). Individual threads of the foundation are drawn or cut and the remaining threads are then twisted and crossed, resulting in gossamer-like, decorative openwork. The fronts of women’s white linen shirts and the headgear were decorated with the so-called paški teg (teg = female handwork). It is an ornament in the form of the original reticella, made on a square space slit into the cloth and filled with threads of crossed cobweb design. It is geometrical in form and made without a drawn pattern. The variety of shirt ornaments made by using the paški teg technique is achieved through the combination of just a few standard, strictly geometrical motifs (small hollow or filled circlets, smaller or bigger circles, semicircles, triangles, rhombi, square or triangular leaves, zigzag stripes and the regular or irregular four-leaf rosette, always outlined with small circles), alternating in concentric circles on a reticular foundation.

In the early twentieth century, the traditional costume came out of everyday use, which brought intensive production to a halt. At the same time, vocational schools were founded, such as the Lace-making school, established in Pag in 1906. In this school, lace-making was taught based on the Pag lacemakers’ skills used to make traditional costume ornaments, only these skills were here used for the production of self-standing decorative objects. This work method only is called Pag lace. It was used to make tablecloths, doilies, handkerchiefs and decorations for parts of clothing – objects used in the bourgeois society – as well as sacral textile.

The decorative elements and production techniques of these objects were skilfully transferred from traditional costumes and have retained their strict, Renaissance geometry to the present. The women of Pag accept this work as a source of additional income, which is often the only certain earning in the meagre island economy. They still invest utmost patience and creativity into their handwork and many of them can be called true artists.

Lace-making on the island of Pag stagnated after the closure of schools and workshops, but individual work has persisted to the present day and maintained the continuity of an autochthonous skill. In the recent years, lace-making in Pag is practiced mainly by women over 60. To preserve the tradition, a one-year lacemaking course was initiated in Pag in 1995 and is attended every year by an impressive number of young and middle-aged Pag women who will hopefully continue the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers. Since 1998, the “Pag Lacemakers’ Society Frane Budak” has also taken care of the promotion of the Pag lace-making as an important segment of the Croatian cultural heritage.