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By Owen Lipsett
According to legend, Pula was founded by the Colchians, who supposedly weighed anchor at the tip of the Istrian Peninsula during their unsuccessful attempt to recapture the Golden Fleece from Jason and the Argonauts.
More likely, Illyrian tribesmen established the settlement that the Romans conquered in 177 BC and subsequently made Istria’s main port, as it has remained ever since.
As well as establishing a city-plan whose overall structure (right down to the Forum) remains visible to this day, the Romans built the city’s incongruously grandiose amphitheater. The sixth largest in the world, its 22,000 seats were enough to hold four times Pula’s population under the Romans!
Despite centuries of pilfering by locals who turned the arena’s limestone seats into the literal building blocks of their dwellings, the Amphitheater remains amazingly well-preserved, so much so that it’s not worth paying the 30Kn admission fee for the dubious pleasure of stepping inside to view some decidedly mediocre exhibits.
The Amphitheater almost became a museum piece itself, in Venice, whose half millennium of rule over Pula is memorialized by the star-shaped fortress built on the foundations of the Roman capitol that crowns the hill in Pula’s center. Fortunately, the Pula-born Venetian nobleman Gabriele Emo convinced his antiquities-obsessed colleagues that it would be wiser to preserve the structure in situ than taking it apart and reassembling it in Venice as proposed!
Amfiteatarska ulica leads from the Amphitheater to the Porta Gemina (Twin Gate), one of two of the original Roman entrances to Pula that remain intact, which is itself located directly next to the only remaining portion of the Roman walls.
The more impressive Arch of the Sergians is 300m to the south. Just behind the Porta Gemina is Pula’s superb Archaeological Museum (admission: 20Kn), which contains most significant Roman artifacts found locally, accompanied by comprehensive explanations in English.
A dirt path behind the museum leads to the ruins of a Roman theater and the aforementioned Venetian fortress. The four-pointed fortress was further fortified when Pula served as the main naval base of the Hapsburg Empire between 1797 and 1918. The disappointing museum inside doesn’t merit the 12Kn entry fee, but you may find the views the fort affords worth the price. I would have been quite satisfied with those from its freely accessible ramparts.
The immaculately preserved Forum just below (although the route down is slightly circuitous) is, in my mind, the best preserved of its kind in the world, perhaps because Pula’s Venetian, Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav, and Croatian rulers have all seen fit to retain its original purpose as the Old Town’s main square.
Dominating the Forum, the first century AD Temple of Augustus, built to celebrate the eponymous emperor, is generally considered one of the finest of its kind outside Italy.
The classical elements of the Town Hall directly next door betray its original purpose as a Temple of Diana before being retrofitted to serve its present purpose in the 13th century. From here, Kandlerova ulica leads back to the Porta Gemina.
© Owen Lipsett 2005, All Rights Reserved
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