In many ways Prvić is a smaller version of Zlarin, a verdant and unspoiled island with plenty in the way of traditional Mediterranean architecture. It has two main settlements – Prvić Luka at the eastern end, and Šepurine at the west – Prvić has a slightly larger permanent population and is marginally more lively as a result. Prvić was traditionally the summer retreat of Šibenik’s leading families, and remains associated with one great Šibenik name in particular - priest, diplomat and scientist Faust Vrančić (1551-1617). Vrančić was buried in Prvić Luka’s parish church. Educated in Padua, Vrančić served at the Habsburg court in Prague before devoting himself to his writings. His Latin-Italian-German-Hungarian-Croatian dictionary (published in 1595) was a landmark in Croatian language study. His more famous Machinae Novae, published in Venice in 1615, contains 49 copper-plate engravings of machines and inventions, in conscious homage to the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci published several decades earlier. Most famous of the illustrations is Homo Volans, which pictures a man descending through the air attached to a square canvas parachute.
English clergyman and scientist John Wilkins, writing some 30 years later, claimed that Vrančić actually tested the parachute himself by jumping from the belfry of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. 
A narrow lane leads over the brow of a hill from Prvić Luka to the island’s other settlement, Šepurine. A hive-like village of stone houses, Šepurine is centred on a parish church whose distinctive bulbous belfry is topped by an extravagant weather vane.