On the rocky Vela Palagruza, which is about 1400 m long and 300 m wide, stands a lighthouse built in 1875, one of the largest of its kind in the Adriatic. The island's only inhabitants are the lighthouse keepers and the local meteorological station employees. The island and its surroundings are a nature reserve. There are more than 200 plant species and over a hundred animals, most of them endemic.
According to the legend, one of the heroes of the Odyssey, the Greek soldier Diomedes, who sailed to the Adriatic Sea after the Trojan War and fought with the Llirians, was buried on Palagruza. After the hero's death, Zeus turned his enemies into birds, which still guard his grave.
