Pula

Our destination for the day was Pula, Croatia. Pula was another city on the Dalmatian Coast of the former Yugoslavia. The coastal area had once been conquered and subsequently ruled by the Romans, Venetians, Habsburgs, Italians, and perhaps others. The last ruler of renown was the dictator Marshal Tito. Tito ruled Yugoslavia until his death, after which Yugoslavia broke up into Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. Perhaps Pula’s greatest claim to fame is its Roman arena.

We arrived in Pula after following a route along the beautiful Adriatic Sea, We climbed off the big tour bus with a bit of anticipation.  I said  “a bit” because we had seen the Colosseum in Rome, which is the Roman arena of Roman arenas. But, our tour guide insisted that this would be different.  The arenas we had seen in France and Turkey had been impressive. We would have to wait and see what made Pula’s special.

Our local tour guide met us at the bus.  She was a delightful lady who spoke impeccable English. We walked from the waterfront uphill to toward the majestic Roman structure.  There was a public park between the sea and the arena filled with growing blooming things.  As we walked through the limestone entrance the guide announced, “This is an arena, not a colosseum.  There is only one Colosseum and it is in Rome.” I made a mental note.

I have always been fascinated by the feats of the Roman engineers. This arena gave me the opportunity to learn even more about their accomplishments, an arena still standing after over two thousand years. This arena is remarkable. Our guide pointed out some of the construction details. There are seventy-two arches and four gates.  The huge stones are connected with iron pins. The pins, which are less than a foot long, are sheathed in lead to prevent the iron for rusting. According to our guide the Pula arena is the best preserved of the over 200 arenas known to exist and one of the six largest.  She told how the arena had been restored to its former glory to be used in modern times. Elton John, Sting, Seal, Alanis Morissette, and many others  performed for crowds of over 23,000 there.  Claudette was delighted to know that Tom Jones had once performed there, although at one time a hundred years ago locals had grazed their cattle in the arena. There are notches in the upper rim of the walls to facilitate the installation of wooden spars that would support a sailcloth awning. The center was not covered. There was an arena of that design in Ridley Scott's film, “Gladiator”. We dutifully followed our tour guide underground like so many goslings following the mother goose.  Underground was a display of pottery and other artifacts. One of the most interesting was a reproduction of a first century Roman map. The original map

was twenty-two feet long!  On the Roman map distances between towns were indicated in Roman numerals but the actual topography of the roads was not shown. All roads were indicated by straight lines. I think it was a map for people who knew where they were. While underground we saw the various passageways leading to access up to the arena for animals and gladiators. The last to fight in the arenas were convicted criminals and animals in the seventh century.

As we left the arena I commented to our guide that the stairways were all different.  The space between steps as well as the height of each step varied. The guide complimented me on my observation and said the designers used stair design to control the speed at which crowds moved around the structure.

We strolled about the city a bit longer with our guide pointing out various landmarks, many of them Roman but some from the Venetian and Habsburg eras.  Mussolini had a lot of influence on architecture when he was in power in Italy.

Before getting on the bus we went to use the public restroom. A public restroom does not mean a free restroom on Croatia. We did not have any kunos in coin. So we had to overpay. Comfort does have a price!