Owen Lipsett
Archaeologists date the human presence on Hvar to the 3rd millennium before Christ, on account of some pottery fragments found in caves on the island. Despite its crucial position at the heart of trading routes along the Adriatic Coast, there was no permanent settlement until the Parans (a group of Ionian Greeks), established the colony of Pharos in 385 BC.
The name of this settlement, located between a sheltered bay and fertile meadow, was corrupted by the island’s subsequent Croatian inhabitants in “Hvar,” although ironically the settlement itself came to be know as “Stari Grad” as it is today. Considering that this simply means “Old Town” and that it’s the oldest in Croatia, however, that’s singularly appropriate.
Pharos fell under the sphere of influence of the Greek empire that had its capital at Syracuse (in present day Sicily). This empire came to control most of the other large offshore islands of the Dalmatian coast, such as Korkyra Melaina (Korčula) and Issa (Vis), but was frequently attacked by the Illyrian tribes who controlled the mainland. When the Syracusan Empire fell a half-century after Pharos’ founding, these tribes managed to gain control of Hvar, and, under Demetrius of Hvar, made it the center of a state that included much of the Dalmatian Coast, before this in turn fell to the Romans in 219. The Romans, who called the island Pharia were the first to extensively develop the island agriculturally. The area’s fertile climate soon made it self-sufficient, and prosperous enough to become an autonomous municipium by the first century AD.
Interestingly, while there is a great deal of contemporary written information about Hvar’s history under the Romans, sources from the early Middle Ages, when the Croatian Neretljani tribe settled the island, are extremely fragmentary. It is certain, however, that Venice occupied Hvar (as the island was known by this time) in 1147, and established a diocese subject to the Archbishop of Zadar, with its cathedral at Stari Grad. In 1180, Hvar fell to King Bela III of Hungary and Croatia, who transferred it to the archdiocese of Split in 1185.
The Venetians retook Hvar in 1278 and, cognizant of how their initial period of rule over the islands Croatian inhabitants had ended after a single generation, undertook a variety of measures to strengthen their control. First, they established the settlement now known as Hvar Town and made it, rather than Stari Grad, the island’s political and religious capital, translating the Cathedral here and establishing a Dominican Monastery (whose Bell Tower still remains.) Second, they abolished the island’s existing clan structure, leading the local nobles to rebel, unsuccessfully, in 1310. The island fell to the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom for a second time in 1331, and after subsequent rule by the Bosnian Kingdom and Ragusan Republic (present-day Dubrovnik), the Venetians managed to retake it, along with the rest of Dalmatia, in 1420.
This third period of Venetian rule proved to be the longest and most successful, lasting until the Venetian Republic’s own dissolution by Napoleon in 1797. It was not without strife, however. In 1510 Matija Ivanić led an uprising by the city’s merchants against the exactions of the local nobility, which had essentially been given a free hand in internal affairs by the Venetians in exchange for its loyalty. One of the longest rebellions of its kind in Renaissance European history, it lasted for five years and was only put down (in an extremely bloody fashion) by the intervention of forces from Venice itself, on their second attempt. Ivanić, who remarkably managed to escape to Rome, has been rather ironically memorialized by having the street (or, more accurately) staircase that leads to the path to Hvar Town’s Citadel named after him! Thereafter, a period of peace and prosperity, the latter largely due to Hvar’s increased wine production, ensued.
This prosperity conspired with several other factors to make Hvar one of the centers of the Croatian Renaissance. Hvar benefited by the fact that its nobility and merchants were mostly Croats, in contrast with the Italian-dominated ports of the Venetian possessions on the Dalmatian mainland. Furthermore, the proximity of the eastern end of the island to the Turkish-ruled Makarska littoral compelled the Venetians to respect the Croats’ language and cultural traditions, lest the latter be inclined to side with the comparatively tolerant Turks. Perhaps most importantly, Hvar Town was located directly on the shipping route to Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik), the Croatian Renaissance’s other great center, allowing ideas to flow as freely as commerce between the two.
On Hvar, the greatest thinkers of the period were the noble poets Hanibal Luiciić of Hvar Town and Petar Hektoroviić of Stari Grad. Hektoroviić is perhaps better known today for designing the Tvrdalj, a utopian residence combined to provide food, shelter, and protection to Stari Grad’s residents, which is perhaps that town’s most evocative sight. The most influential, however, may well have been Friar Vinko Pribojeviić,, who in 1525 delivered his paper De origine successibisque slavorum (Of The Origin and History of the Slavs) at the Dominican monastery to the local nobility. Holding the not unreasonable thesis that the Slavic people shared a common origin (as well as the somewhat more optimistic view that it was a Croatian one), he can quite reasonably be seen as the progenitor of the nineteenth century Pan-Slavic movement..
Such high-minded concerns came to a halt in 1571 however, when the Turkish raider Uluz Ali razed Hvar Town to the ground and ravaged Stari Grad (including the as yet incomplete Tvrdalj). Although the Venetians and their allies in the Catholic Holy League saw off the Ottoman naval threat at the Battle of Lepanto the same year, Hvar suffered lasting damage. Hvar Town was rebuilt (and more comprehensively fortified) in what is more or less its present form, and ecclesiastical buildings across the island were strengthened. This policy was generally effective, but it did not prevent the island’s fall to the Austrians in 1797, who subsequently were compelled to cede it to Napoleon’s forces. Austria retook Hvar in 1813, consigning it like much of the rest of the Dalmatian Coast to a century of genteel prosperity and general irrelevance.
Hvar did serve, however, as the stage for one of the most important events of nineteenth century history. On July 20, 1866, the Austrian navy under Admiral Wilhelm von Tegtthoff defeated its much stronger Italian counterpart between Hvar and Vis in an engagement that ensured Austrian’s retention of its Dalmatian territories. The result of this battle, the last to feature combat “in melee” (ships used as battering rams against one another) mean that all of historical Croatia remained under Austrian rule, thus facilitating its wholesale incorporation into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (subsequently known as Yugoslavia) a half century later.
Perhaps more appropriately, Hvar was the site of the foundation of the Hygienic Society in 1858, the world’s first tourist organization. In seeking to make Hvar attractive, it oversaw a comprehensive program of draining its inland marshes and improving its roads. Hvar’s attractive and fragnant fields of lavender and legendary nightlife, which have made it Croatia’s most popular resort among both Croatians and visitors alike, bear testament to the success of the Hygience Society’s mission!
© Owen Lipsett 2005 All Rights Reserved
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