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The Adriatic Sea is not a well-known sea though it laps the shores of some of Europe's most popular tourist destinations: Venice and Trieste in Italy, along with Bari in southern Italy (the ferry route to Greece), and Dubrovnik in Croatia (formerly Yugoslavia). Click on the map at right to enlarge.
This definition from Hutchinson's Encyclopedia online is perhaps the most succinct: "Large arm of the Mediterranean Sea, lying northwest to southeast between the Italian and the Balkan peninsulas. The western shore is Italian; the eastern includes Croatia, [Serbia] Montenegro, and Albania, with two small strips of coastline owned by Slovenia and Bosnia Herzogovina. The Strait of Otranto, between Italy and Albania, links the Adriatic with the Ionian Sea to the south. The chief ports are Venice, Brindisi, Trieste, Ancona, and Bari in Italy, and Rijeka in Croatia. The sea is about 805 km/500 mi long; area 135,250 sq km/52,220 sq mi."
More detail and honest ambiguity is provided by wikipedia.org (one of my favorite online resources), who reports: "The Adriatic Sea is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea separating the Apennine peninsula (Italy) from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...The western coast is Italian, while the eastern coast runs along the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and Albania." There is some confusion as to where the Adriatic Sea leaves off and the Ionian Sea begins, but the Ionian is defined by the same source as "an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy, including Calabria and Sicily, to the west, by southwestern Albania and a large number of Greek islands, including Corfu, Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaka, and Lefkas to the east."
I found an interesting project on the geography of the Adriatic Sea. The EUROSTRATAFORM project offers information on its watersheds: The primary fluvial dispersal system in the Adriatic is the Po River, with additional contributions from many smaller Apennine rivers. Sediment is deposited on the Po delta with some distribution towards the south along the shelf. Eventually the Bari Canyon intercepts this transport pathway, and sediment is transferred directly to the deep water Adriatic Basin. During low sea level stands the shelf area was much reduced and sediment moved more directly to the deeper water entering the Adriatic Basin from the north.