Istria-ly Coming Along Now

On our first proper day in the Balkans we started at the southern end of the Istria peninsula and worked our way through a couple of sites and back up to the top but this time on the eastern side.

We spent most of the day in the lovely Pula which is a wonderful example of the cultural melting pot that is Istria. Controlled by the Romans, later Venetians, Austrians, Italians, and finally Croatians the city was a mix of types of architectures and histories. We figured a good place to start was with the Temple of Augustus, one of the most impressive standing Roman buildings outside of Italy. This was once part of a triad of temples on the forum and now the modern main square. Although not technically the original: it was bombed in 1944 and then put back together like a massive jigsaw in the 1950s.

Further into the city the layers of cultures overlapping one another is portrayed by the massive complex of the house of Agrippina. Now only partially uncovered and covering the entire space between these lucky, or unlucky if you don't like being bothered by tourists, tenants and their sheds.

Jumping forward in time now we went to the second Austro-Hungarian fortress of our trip, although this time it was initially built by the Venetians and updated later. The fortress and its surrounding defensive complex were formidably built and updated after 1850. Pictured on the map in green is the fortress at the centre of Pula we visited and in red some of the supporting fortresses. Out to sea as well were a maze of steel nets and mines. All this was created to protect what became the main Austro-Hungarian naval base eclipsing both Venice, due to its political instability following the 1848 revolution, and Trieste. 

Walking around the comprehensive fortifications the Austro-Hungarians busied themselves building for 60 years, only for the nature of the war that emerged to make them irrelevant, I had a distinct sense of the pointlessness of it all.

Under the fortress were a series of tunnels created during and after the first world war to house prisoners and to defend the citizens in the case of an ariel attack. Impressive though they were they were only used on two occasions during the first world war. The first being when, on its way to try and catch the fleet unawares, a French submarine sneakily entered the harbour only to get its tail caught in a steel net. This was not unrecoverable since the captain was able to get the sub free but the commotion caused made it super obvious on the surface what was happening and amusingly the French submarine had to surface and surrender. The second such incident went down in a very similar fashion with an Italian airship trying to sneak over the port only to be downed very quickly and limp its way to the defenders to ask for help. 

After these two high octane dramas on the first floor of the tunnels we were surprised by the extensive Pula tram museum on the second floor. Although this vision of the future, equipped with its implausible hot air balloons, did provide us much joy.

Back up on the surface we explored a series of Roman ruins including this super impressive amphitheatre. Arguably one of the top 5 best surviving in the world, this amphitheatre's size has confused classicists due to its provincial nature in the Roman Empire. What I especially enjoyed was that it was built in two phases over a hundred years apart with the inner seating significantly older than the outer walls and their accompanying towers. 

After a long day in Pula we headed back on the road up to the top of Istria to Fiume but decided to stop off at some of the famous stone round huts. I think polite is a good way to describe this guy.

Further up the road we decided to take in the sunset in the ruins of Dvigrad, an abandoned medieval town. Since the town was abandoned due to rife disease and not warfare, the ruins were in a really good state of preservation. Also, the site is not being actively maintained so we were free to wander about the ruins and see all the nooks and crannies. Pictured here seemed to be the central meeting place with the surrounding houses of wealthy citizens, the photo was taken from the ruins of the Church.

Danni's favourite fact: the Roman Amphitheatre's are called such because they are made up of two theatres facing each other (amphi- meaning on both sides)