Saturday 13th July 2024 • Promotional Content


by the metallic screech of sword on shield. Two gladiators circle one another in the arena, kicking up dust with sandalled feet, sweat dripping onto the dry earth. Tey each take a few tentative swipes before one fighter connects with the crucial blow; his adversary staggers, clutching his side, then crumples in a heap of leather and steel on the floor. For a split second, the audience


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hesitates, unsure of what they’ve just seen. Ten, the fallen warrior stands up, wipes fake blood from his brow with a grin and bows enthusiastically. “And now, we’ll enjoy a procession of the best haircuts in Ancient Rome!” the announcer proclaims over a crackling loudspeaker. Proudly yet lightly — that’s how


the Croatian city of Pula wears its heritage. “Back in the first century, Pula was known as Pietas Julia,” explains Vesna Jovicic, a local guide with long gunmetal hair and thick- rimmed purple sunglasses, when I meet her after the gladiator show at the arena. “Emperor Vespasian had a lover from Pula called Antonia — a freed slave who became his companion after the death of his wife. He built the amphitheatre for her.” Much has changed in the


intervening centuries. Te amphitheatre now hosts the annual Pula Film Festival, while British band Florence and Te Machine had graced its stage a few weeks before my arrival. In 2013, the arena even hosted the beatification of a saint, priest Miroslav Bulešic, who was murdered for his beliefs in the 1940s. Still, its ancient stones have stood firm while the political sands have shifted time and again around Pula and the wider region of Istria in which it sits. Despite, or perhaps because of, the mercurial political climate, Istria has developed vivid, proudly protected cultural traditions all of its own, in music, dance and languages. It’s these that I’ve come to explore.


he roar of the crowd echoes against the 2,000-year-old arches of Pula’s Roman amphitheatre, cut through


Te Istrian Peninsula is the


largest in the Adriatic Sea, spanning Croatian, Italian and Slovenian territory, with a Croatian county, also called Istria, making up 90% of its landmass. It came under control of the Austrian Empire in the 19th century, and Italy between 1918 and 1947. It was then part of Yugoslavia before becoming absorbed into the newly minted country of Croatia in 1991. “I have a friend whose grandfather


was born in Austria, his father in Italy, himself in Yugoslavia and his son in Croatia — all without leaving Pula,” says Vesna. “Governments come and go, but Istria just carries on being itself. Technically, most Istrians are ethnically Croats, but other Croatians say we’re Italian. Both wrong — we’re Istrian!” Pula is Istria’s largest city, and


its naturally protected harbour has long made it attractive to invading forces, from the Romans and Franks to Napoleon and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most of the buildings are hewn from gleaming white Istrian stone, an impermeable limestone that’s been prized by successive invaders from the Goths to the Venetians. Around 90% of the buildings in modern Venice are made from it — a physical manifestation of what is, as I’m about to discover, a closely entwined cultural relationship. As we walk through the old


town, Vesna reminisces about the celebrities she’d seen in Pula in her youth: Elizabeth Taylor walking arm-in-arm with President Tito of Yugoslavia, her husband Richard Burton (who was playing Tito in the 1973 movie Te Battle of Sutjeska) trailing behind. Tito loved Istria, spending four months of the year in villas on the Brijuni Islands, around five miles from Pula. Today, the islands are a national park, where the rocky coastline is imprinted with the 130-million-year-old footprints of dinosaurs. Vesna takes me to the Amifteatar


Restaurant for lunch — she wants me to try Istrian olive oil. “Pliny the Elder said it was the second best in the Roman Empire,” she says, with a


Dating back to the first century, Pula Arena, the Roman amphitheatre, hosted gladiatorial battles under the Romans and tournaments of knights in medieval times. Today, it serves as an iconic backdrop for world-class concerts and events


hint of pride. It’s aromatic and grassy, and, like all the finest olive oil, leaves a warming sensation in the throat. We enjoy it with bread and pršut, the jewel of Istrian cuisine: a cured ham dried by the bora, a northerly wind that buffets the Adriatic Coast in the winter months and lends the meat a soft saltiness.


Freedom through music Emanating from the restaurant speakers is a soundtrack of bagpipes, recorders and voices, intertwining along unusual-sounding scales: Istria’s unmistakable brand of folk


music. Keen to learn more, I arrange to meet Dario Marušic after lunch, a musician who’s been at the forefront of the Istrian folk music revival for decades. He’s a tall man, with white, spiky hair, his silver earring the only clue to a rock ‘n’ roll-tinged past. “When I was 15, a friend lent me records by two English bands: Pentangle and Steeleye Span,” he says. “I was enchanted, so I went to England to find out more. I was amazed that there were young people who looked like me, with long hair, rock musicians playing traditional folk tunes. I thought, why shouldn’t I do the same thing in Istria?” Istrian folk music presents special


challenges when it comes to fusion with Western styles, however. Unlike traditional Western music, which is based on the use of tones and semitones evenly spaced within a scale, Istrian folk makes extensive use of improvisation and microtones — the notes that would fall in between the keys of a piano. “Tis music is very free — it’s difficult to understand for formal musicians,” says Dario. Classical composers have attempted to codify Istrian music into formal scales, but the inexact spacing of the notes means they defy easy categorisation. When Dario was asked to formally


describe Istrian folk music for its inclusion on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009, he settled on ‘two-part polyphony in narrow intervals’. “It’s a mouthful, but it needs to be to describe it!” he says with a chuckle. “Te polyphony refers to the two singing voices, characteristic of our music.” I’d listened to some Istrian folk


Traditional dance and costumes of Pula, a city inhabited since prehistoric times and today a major port in Croatia


The region of Istria, a peninsula in western Croatia, has a Mediterranean climate that’s perfect for growing olives


music on YouTube before my trip. Woodwind instruments wrapped around dual voices, improvising in the microtonal way Dario had described. To ears like mine, used to a rigid system of tones and semitones, the constant use of microtones can sound dissonant or harsh. Tat much was evident from the video’s comment section, where one rather ungenerous observer had suggested


the music sounded like ‘someone stepping on a cat’. Istrian folk music is mainly found


these days in its natural habitat — in the villages of the countryside. Tere are associations working to bring it to a wider audience, such as KUD Uljanik. I walk with Dario to Pula’s Forum Square, where the group is staging a performance. Te artists — numbering around 20 — are dressed in traditional rural garb: the men in white shirts, leather waistcoats and knee-high boots, the women in flowing head scarves, white blouses and red pleated skirts. Musicians play bagpipes made from sheep stomachs and huge recorders called roženice, while occasionally breaking into microtonal polyphonic singing. As the music unfolds, it begins to make more sense to my untrained ears. “Tis is just music with a different ABC, a different grammar,” says Dario. “But anyone can learn to understand it.” While the musicians play, the other performers dance, circling one another with their arms linked, reminiscent of British country dancing. After the performance, I get


talking to one of the dancers, Vanja Fornazar, a woman of around 30. I ask her why she does it. “‘It started out as something fun — I just liked dancing,” she says. “But then it started to feel like something important, to preserve this traditional part of our culture.”


Getting there & around EasyJet flies direct from Gatwick to Pula Airport between June and September. Ryanair flies direct from Stansted to Pula Airport between June and September. easyjet.com ryanair.com


More info Istria Tourism. istra.hr Rough Guide to Croatia. £16.99


First published in the May 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). Read the feature in full at nationalgeographic.com/travel


Te Travel Guide 3


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