Backpackers Home
Quiet residential pocket, attentive host, the kitchen-and-garden hostel where solo travellers actually meet each other.
Backpackers Home is the small, family-run hostel in a quiet residential pocket north of the Old Town — fifteen minutes' walk to Five Wells Square and a five-minute stroll to the bakery and corner shop reviewers keep mentioning. Rated 8.6 across 1,158 reviews, it's the under-the-radar choice for solo travellers who want a kitchen, a garden and a host who knows your name by day two.
Backpackers Home is on Ulica Denisa Špike in the Voštarnica/Stanovi residential strip — across the small footbridge from the peninsula and three blocks back from the harbour. The walk into the Old Town is fifteen minutes through residential Zadar, past the bakery and the small Konzum on the corner that the reviewers all reference as 'right next door'. It's not a tourist street; it's a Zadar neighbourhood with a hostel in the middle of it.
The property is built around a shared kitchen and a sun-terrace garden, with dorms and a few private doubles spread across two floors. The kitchen is the social anchor — fridge, microwave, kettle, kitchenware, and enough seating that breakfast turns into a planning session for the day's Plitvice or Pag trip. The garden runs the same way: outdoor seating, picnic area, the kind of space where solo travellers naturally end up sharing a bottle of wine from the Konzum next door.
Rooms are basic-but-clean: AC in every room, shared bathrooms cleaned multiple times a day (a recurring praise point), strong WiFi, and enough sockets per bunk for the laptop-and-phone-and-camera traveller. The hostel runs full-day security, which matters in a residential street where you might be coming back from a 23:00 dinner in the Old Town.
The scene skews solo and friendly. There's no bar, no scheduled crawl, no DJ — what you get instead is the kind of hostel where the kitchen at 19:00 is a circular conversation between five travellers from five countries.
- 01The kitchen is large enough that travellers actually use it together — not the lonely solo-cook scene some hostels become
- 02Quiet residential street with a bakery and supermarket within 30 seconds — proper neighbourhood living, not tourist-strip stress
- 03Multilingual solo-traveller crowd: reviewers from Korea, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Argentina all in the same week
- 04Bathrooms cleaned multiple times daily — visible in the cleanliness scores
- 05AC, strong WiFi, and enough sockets per bunk to plug in everything
- Shared kitchen with fridge, microwave, kettle and kitchenware
- Sun terrace and garden picnic area as the social anchor
- Bakery and Konzum supermarket literally next door
- 24/7 security on a quiet residential street
“I had a great time in Zadar thanks to this amazing hostel. The staff was super nice, facilities were great (near bathroom, more than enough sockets, strong WiFi) and it was always full of solo travellers happy to socialise.”
“Open kitchen, quiet neighbourhood, small shop and bakery next door. Great spot for solo travellers who want to be out of the tourist crush but still walking distance to the Old Town.”
“Staff were great and welcoming, nice spaces to hang out and chill. Showers and toilets were cleaned multiple times during the day, which made a real difference.”
- Old Town footbridge8 min walk
- Five Wells Square & Land Gate15 min walk
- Sea Organ & Greeting to the Sun20 min walk
- Konzum supermarket + bakery30 sec walk
- Maestrala Beach12 min walk
- Bus station (Plitvice, Pag, Krka)10 min walk
