Abstract. Extra virgin olive oil samples were collected from different geographical areas of Central Dalmatia region in Croatia including locations both on the coast and islands. This set included 41 oils of cultivar Oblica, 1 per cultivars Coratina and Leccino, and 5 of mixed cultivars Lastovka and Oblica. Attenuated total reflectance (ATR) spectra of non-treated samples were recorded and principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out on a set of obtained spectra, as well as their first and second derivatives. The quality of PCA models was assessed using leave-one-out cross-validation and optimal number of principal components was determined. In the case of ATR spectra, the first principal component accounted for 42.92 % of the total variance among the samples and the optimal number of components was 6, whereas in the case of second derivatives the first principal component accounted for 95.76 % of the total variance and the optimal number of components was 3. Classification of olive oils on the basis of geographical origin was proposed and underlying spectral differences among the spectra were determined by investigating principal component loadings. These differences arise as a result of variations in fatty acid composition. It was found out that ATR in combination with PCA could easily distinguish between samples collected from the coastal area and those from the islands. Classification results were further confirmed by using spherical principal components procedure, projection pursuit and robust PCA, as well as hierarchical cluster analysis.(doi: 10.5562/cca2377)