Dalmatia (Croatian: Dalmacija; Latin : Dalmatia) is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, situated nearly all in modern Croatia and spreading between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Gulf of Kotor (Montenegro) in the southeast. The hinterland, Inner Dalmatia (Dalmatinska Zagora), ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north but narrows to just a few kilometers wide in the south. Bosnia has a few kms of seashore in southern Dalmatia.

Croatian Dalmatia is currently composed of four counties, the primary cities of which are Zadar, Šibenik, Split and Dubrovnik. Other large cities in Dalmatia include Biograd, Kaštela, Sinj, Solin, Omiš, Knin, Metković, Makarska, Trogir, Ploče, Trilj and Imotski.

The largest Dalmatian islands include Dugi Otok, Ugljan, Pašman, Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Vis, Lastovo and Mljet. The largest Dalmatian mountains are Dinara, Mosor, Svilaja, Biokovo, Moseć and Kozjak. The rivers are Zrmanja, Krka, Cetina and Neretva.

Because of the way sea currents and winds flow, the sea water of the Adriatic is, according to Croatian tourist authorities, cleaner and warmer on the Croatian side than it is on the Italian side. The Dalmatian concordant coastline also includes an immense number of coves, islands and channels. This makes it an attractive place for nautical races, and nautical tourism in general. There are also a large number of marinas.

Dalmatia also includes several national parks that are tourist attractions: Paklenica karst river, Kornati archipelago, Krka river rapids and Mljet island within island.

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The historical region of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Dalmatia, stretching from Istria to historical Albania. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but it was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian vegetation province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.

Among other things, the ecclesiastical primatical territory today continues to be larger because of the history: it includes part of modern Montenegro (another former republic of Yugoslavia), notably around Bar (Antivari), the (honorary) Roman Catholic primas of Dalmatia, but an exempt archbishopric without suffragans while the archbishoprics of Split (also a historical primas of Dalmatia) has provincial authority over all Croatian dioceses except the exempt archbishopric of Zadar.

The southernmost transitional part of historical Dalmatia, the Gulf of Kotor is not part of present-day Croatian Dalmatia, but part of Montenegro. The regional coherent geographical unit of historical Dalmatia, the coastal region between Istria and the Gulf of Kotor, includes the Orjen mountain whose peak at 1894 m is the highest point, even if it is part of Montenegro. If we take present-day Dalmatia only as a geographical unit, the highest peak would be Dinara (1913 m) which is not a coastal mountain. On the other hand, Biokovo (Sv. Jure 1762 m) and Velebit (Vaganjski vrh 1758 m) are coastal Dinaric mountains but not as high as Orjen. In the tectonical sense, Orjen is the highest mountain of Austro-Hungarian province Dalmatia, while Biokovo is the highest mountain of the administrative unit...