Day 33 - Pula (Wednesday 15th May 2024)

Our last full day in Istria has arrived. By tomorrow night we’ll have waved farewell to Croatia and we’ll be in Slovenia – still in the Balkans and still in old Yugoslavia, but a new country.

The “capital” of Istria is the city of Pula, located on the southern-most tip of the peninsula. Pula was first conquered by the benevolent Romans about two centuries before Christ. They realised it geographic importance for controlling trade through the region and it’s good climate for growing wine and olives. It’s still an important commercial town, supporting a large and busy port. Tourists put Pula on their itinerary for a few different reasons. It’s got the best connections by rail, air and road to the rest of Istria. It’s got some nice beaches, apparently. It’s got an archipelago of islands just off the coast call the Brijuni Islands which is a holiday destination for many people and a National Park. It’s got good sea connections to the hundreds (probably thousands) of Croatian islands that extend all the way down the coast to Dubrovnik. But for me, best of all and the only reason we went there, was the magnificently intact Roman Amphitheatre.

 

 

The Amphitheatre is a smaller version of the Colosseum in Rome, and performed the same function for much of its continued 600 years of use. Construction started about three decades before Christ and about 100 years before the Colosseum. Unlike the Colosseum, it’s arched walled are all intact so one can get a better sense of what the Colosseum would have looked like. Also unlike the Colosseum, visitors can wander freely all over the structure including down on the arena floor and underneath it. To stand in the centre of the arena and imagine how it must have looked for gladiators, slaves and beasts alike almost two thousand years ago is mind-blowing. To sit on the stones in the stands and imagine what the spectators saw is mind-blowing. I immediately recalled my years of studying Latin at high-school. To see and feel and touch that which I had learned about is mind-blowing. Of course, I also recalled the “colosseum scene” from “Life of Brian” – that just made me chuckle to myself and send a photo with an appropriate quote from the script to Emily on WhatsApp while I was sitting there in the moment. As an architectural and, dare I say, spiritual highlight of my travels over the years it was right up there with Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

The Amphitheatre is still used today for, I guess one could say, it’s original purpose – entertaining the masses. It regularly hosts performances of all sorts including classical concerts and rock concerts. How good would it be to see a rock concert in such a setting?

 

After an hour there, just spending time to soak it all in, we wandered over towards the “old town” built around the original Roman Forum. Nothing like the one in Rome, just a vast public square really, surrounded by restaurants. The one saving grace is the ancient Temple of Augustus, tucked away in one corner which dates back to the same period as the construction of the Amphitheatre. Inside we saw a very small exhibition of artefacts uncovered in Pula from the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries. A few ancients gates still stand to mark the boundaries of what was one the walled town of Roman times. In the centre on a high hill stands a star-shaped fort built by the Venetians in the 17^th century, complete with a wide moat. We circumnavigated the fort and then the hill upon which it sits before heading back to the bus station.

I forgot to mention at the beginning that despite having a car at our disposal we elected to catch the bus to Pula, a journey of only 40 minutes and about 40kms and about €12.00 each. While waiting for the bus in Rovinj we got chatting to a couple about our vintage from Tasmania. Their Balkan/Dalmatian journey is more or less what we’re doing, but in reverse. Consequently, they’d already been to Ljubljana in Slovenia so gave us their public transport tickets with about €6.00 value left on each, which was very kind, so our trip to Pula was even cheaper!

Just before 5:00pm we arrived back at Apartment Iva, got our luggage organised, had a dinner of salami, cheese, bread, salad, and wine and chilled before an early start and a drive to Zagreb in the morning and a train to Ljubljana in the afternoon.