Cultural tourism is one of the dominant forms of tourism and one of the main motives that encourages tourists to visit monuments, archaeological sites, and discover folklore customs and other traditions. Cultural tourism brings together people and customs and in a certain way best represents the culture of a certain place and helps in the development of the location where it is located. The Croatian soil is rich in cultural art and buildings that have become part of cultural tourism, such as various churches, walls and palaces. One of the more popular examples of cultural tourism in Croatia is Dubrovnik. Cultural tourism, on the one hand, implies an offer that is almost exclusively based on culture in the narrower sense of the word. The European soil is rich in different cultural objects that provide good ground for the development of cultural tourism due to their peculiarities and people's interest in them. The two mentioned terms are intertwined by their connection and mutual influence. UNESCO is the leading international institution that takes care of the protection of cultural and natural assets. The categories of "world heritage" were conceived in 1972 with the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. The connection between culture and tourism in Croatia is also evident by the fact that Rijeka was the city of culture in 2020. The paper presents examples of protected cultural heritage in Dubrovnik, Poreč and Split with a comparison with those in Portugal.