Barbarellas Discotheque

The sky as a roof

When The Garden Resort turns off the last track, the Dalmatian night doesn't end: it moves to a pine-covered cove in Uvala Prosika. There, Barbarellas Discotheque hosts an open-air afterhours whose roof is the firmament and whose backdrop is the Adriatic. Only the DJ booth and the bars are covered; the rest is an open-air dance floor, vegetation, and, from five in the morning, that light that changes the character of every track. Founder Nick Colgan formulated it as a concrete dream: a place to dance outside, under the stars, until dawn, after the sister venue closes. Arriving by boat from the resort or by shuttle bus is part of the ritual.

From a circular sweatbox to the open bay

The name pays tribute to Barbarella's in Birmingham, the seventies club where Colgan and his peers were educated on the dance floor. The first Croatian version occupied, between 2006 and 2011, a circular venue with a disco aesthetic in Petrčane, attached to the original Garden Festival: an intimate and sweltering space that hosted Kenny Dope, Larry Heard, Kerri Chandler, or Andrew Weatherall. After the eviction, in November 2011, an open-air venue appeared a few kilometers from the new Garden Tisno, far enough from the towns to be able to extend the party. Seeing more than a thousand people dancing among trees until after sunrise reminded more than one veteran of the Amnesia of the eighties. That is the physical identity that still stands: not a magazine-design club, but a bohemian dance floor among pines.

Final destination of the festival coast

The venue is not a touring brand. It is the sister club of The Garden Resort and the afterhours where Love International, Defected, Dekmantel Selectors, Dimensions, Outlook Origins, Soundwave, or Hospitality on the Beach land. In the booth, DJ Harvey—his last Garden Festival, with the Bee Gees at dawn, became a dance floor myth—, Horse Meat Disco, Craig Richards, Ben UFO, Black Coffee, Nina Kraviz, The Blessed Madonna, or Bonobo have closed nights. In 2014, The Guardian included it among the twenty-five best clubs in Europe; DJ Mag kept it for years in its Top 100, with a peak near the 28th position. The reputation is not born from screens or an overloaded VIP area: it is born from dancing until the sky stops being black.

Funktion-One and summer season

Around 2015, a Funktion-One system was installed, which the venue's official website continues to cite as the main PA. The capacity is estimated at 3,000 people. There are no fixed residents: the programming is based on guests and collectives, concentrated in the Dalmatian summer, with sessions that usually start around 23:00 or midnight and last until 06:00. The 2026 season opened with Casabianca and Dobar House and extended until the end of August, with afters for Love International, Hospitality on the Beach, and Balance.