About Pula(Croatia)
The natural beauty of Pula's surrounding countryside and turquoise water of the Adriatic have made the city an internationally popular summer vacation destination. The pearl nearby is Brijuni national park visited by numerous world leaders since it was the summer residence of Josip Broz Tito. Roman villas and temples still lie buried among farm fields and along the shoreline of the dozens of surrounding fishing and farming villages. The coastal waters offer beaches, fishing, wreck dives to ancient Roman galleys and World War I warships, cliff diving, and sailing to unspoiled coves and islands large and small.
Pula is the end point of the EuroVelo 9 cycle route that runs from Gdańsk on the Baltic Sea through Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia.
It is possible to track dinosaur footprints on the nearby sea shores; certain more important finds have been made at an undisclosed location near Bale.
In 2008 Pula Tourist Board with Parabureau design agency initiated the project of branding the City of Pula. The project won The Rebrand 100 Global Award.
As a result of its rich political history, Pula is a city with a cultural mixture of people and languages from the Mediterranean and Central Europe, ancient and contemporary. Pula's architecture reflects these layers of history. Residents are commonly fluent in foreign languages, especially Italian, often also German and English. From 30 October 1904 to March 1905 Irish writer James Joyce taught English at the Berlitz School; his students were mainly Austro-Hungarian naval officers who were stationed at the Naval Shipyard. While he was in Pula he organised the local printing of his broadsheet The Holy Office, which satirised both William Butler Yeats and George William Russell.
Pula is the largest city in Istria county, with a metropolitan area of 90,000 people. The city itself has 62,080 residents (2005), while the metropolitan area includes Barban (2,802 residents), Fažana (3,050 residents), Ližnjan (2,945 residents), Marčana (3,903 residents), Medulin (6,004 residents), Svetvinčenat (2,218 residents) and Vodnjan (5,651 residents).
Its population density is 1,093.27 inhabitants per square kilometre (2,831.6 /sq mi), ranking Pula fifth in Croatia.
Its birth rate is 1.795 per cent and its mortality rate is 1.014 per cent (in 2001 466 people were born and 594 deceased), with a natural population decrease of −0.219 per cent and vital index of 78.45.
The majority of its citizens are Croats representing 71.65% of the population (2001 census). Ethnic minorities and their composition is as follows: 3,415 Serbs (5.83 per cent), 2,824 autochtonous Italians (4.82 per cent), 980 Bosniaks (1.67 per cent), 731 Slovenians (1.25 per cent) and the rest belong to other minor ethnic communities.
Evidence of presence of Homo erectus at 1 million years ago have been found in the cave of Šandalja near Pula. Pottery from the Neolithic period (6000–2000 BC), indicating human settlement, have been found around Pula. In the Bronze Age (1800–1000 BC), a new type of settlement appeared in Istria, called 'gradine', or Hill-top fortificatations. Many late Bronze Age bone objects, such as tools for smoothing, for drilling, sewing needles, as well as bronze spiral pendants, have found in the area around Pula. The type of materials found in Bronze Age sites in Istria connects these with sites around the Danube. The inhabitants of Istria in the Bronze Age are known as Proto Illyrians.
The foundation of the settlement based on archaeological evidence dates to ca. the 10th century BC.[dubious – discuss][6] Greek pottery and a part of a statue of Apollo have been found, attesting to the presence of the Greek culture.
Greek tradition attributed the foundation of Polai to the Colchians, mentioned in the context of the story of Jason and Medea, who had stolen the golden fleece. The Colchians, who had chased Jason into the northern Adriatic, were unable to catch him and ended up settling in a place they called Polai, signifying "city of refuge".
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city and region were attacked by the Ostrogoths, Pula being virtually destroyed by Odoacer, a Germanic foederati general in 476AD The town was ruled by the Ostrogoths from 493 to 538 AD When their rule ended, Pula came under the rule of the Exarchate of Ravenna (540–751). During this period Pula prospered and became the major port of the Byzantine fleet and integral part of the Byzantine Empire. The Basilica of Saint Mary Formosa was built in the 6th century.
From 788 on Pula was ruled by the Frankish kingdom under Charlemagne, with the introduction of the feudal system.
Pula became the seat of the elective counts of Istria until 1077. The town was taken in 1148 by the Venetians and in 1150 Pula swore allegiance to the Republic of Venice, thus becoming a Venetian possession. For centuries thereafter, the city's fate and fortunes were tied to those of Venetian power. It was conquered by the Pisans in 1192 but soon reconquered by the Venetians.
In 1238 Pope Gregory IX formed an alliance between Genoa and Venice against the Empire, and consequently against Pisa too. As Pula had sided with the Pisans, the city was sacked by the Venetians in 1243. It was destroyed again in 1267 and again in 1397 when the Genoese defeated the Venetians in a naval battle.
Pula then slowly went into decline. This decay was accelerated by the infighting of local families: the ancient Roman Sergi family and the Ionotasi (1258–1271) and the clash between Venice and Genoa for the control of the city and its harbour (late 13th – 14th century ). In 1291 – by the Peace of Treviso – Patriarch Raimondo della Torre gained the city as part of the secular realm of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, only to lose it to Venice in 1331, which then held it until its downfall in 1797.
Pula is quoted by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, who had visited Pula, in the Divine Comedy: "come a Pola, presso del Carnaro ch'Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna" or "as Pula, along the Quarnero, that marks the end of Italy and bathes its boundaries".
For several years after 1945, Pula was administered by the United Nations. Istria was partitioned into occupation zones until the region became officially united with the rest of Croatia within the SFR Yugoslavia on 15 September 1947. Pula formed an enclave of the Zone "A" defined by the Morgan Line within SFR Yugoslavia, occupied by a company of the United States 351st Infantry and a British battalion of the 24th Guards Brigade.
When the city was ceded to SR Croatia, a republic of SFR Yugoslavia, upon the ratification of the Italian Peace Treaty on 15 September 1947, creating the Free Territory of Trieste, its population of 45,000 was largely made up of ethnic Italians. However, between December 1946 and September 1947, most of the city's Italian residents opted to emigrate to Italy during the Istrian exodus: on 18 August 1946 it was the site of the Vergarola explosion and on 10 February 1947 an Italian woman named Maria Pasquinelli shot
British generalDe Winton.
Subsequently, the city's Croatian name, 'Pula', became the official name, while the former Italian one was 'Pola'. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1992, Pula and Istria have become part of the modern-day Republic of Croatia.
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