Near Poreč
Close enough to drive in for dinner, far enough to have a garden, a pool and eight parking spaces. The nearest beach is ten kilometres.
Poreč is the reason most people look at this part of Istria: the Euphrasian Basilica, the marina, the long run of coast either side of it, and more restaurants than a week can get through. It is also, in August, extremely busy.
Villa Bucks is 18 km inland, a 15 to 20 minute drive. That is close enough to go in for an evening and come back, and far enough that the group has a garden, a pool and silence at night.
A seafront house for 20 people, if you can find one, is priced accordingly. Ten kilometres back from the water the same money buys 9 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a heated pool and 1,200 m² of garden.
It also buys parking. Twenty people arrive in four or five cars, and there are eight spaces at the house, five of them inside the gate — a detail that stops mattering only once you have tried to solve it in a coastal town in August.
The nearest beach is a rock beach 10 km away, twelve to fifteen minutes by car. The Poreč coast, with the wider choice of swimming and the beach bars, is a few minutes further on.
Most groups settle into a rhythm of pool days and beach days. The pool is fifty square metres, private, and can be heated for €20 a day — which is why the pool tends to win.
Being inland puts the hill towns within reach as well as the coast. Motovun is 22 km, Grožnjan 28 km, Hum — the smallest town in the world — 35 km. Rovinj is 40 km and Pula 55 km.
Aquapark Istralandia is 18 km, which is the single most useful fact on this page if you are travelling with children.
18 km, which is a 15 to 20 minute drive. Close enough to go in for dinner and back the same evening, far enough that you are not in the middle of it.
10 km — a rock beach about 12 to 15 minutes away by car. There is a longer choice of beaches on the Poreč stretch of coast a few minutes beyond that.
Price, quiet and parking. A whole house for twenty on the seafront costs considerably more, and in August the town is busy in a way a large group feels acutely. Ten kilometres inland you get a garden, a pool and eight parking spaces — five of them inside the gate.
For the coast, yes. For daily life, no — the village shop, bakery and restaurant are 300 metres away on foot. There are eight parking spaces at the house — five inside the gated grounds and three just outside — and free bikes for the flat roads nearby.
Poreč at 18 km, the Aquapark Istralandia at 18 km, Motovun at 22 km, Grožnjan at 28 km, Rovinj at 40 km and the Roman arena at Pula at 55 km. All of them are comfortable day trips and back.
Send the week you have in mind and the size of the group. You will get a written reply from the owners, not a booking portal.