Balkans Road Trip: Day 4 – Poreč, Rovinj, and Pula

We ate breakfast at our hostel with utmost speed to avoid awkward small talk with our fellow travellers and sped back to Croatia. One of the things I have noticed about roads in Italy and Slovenia is that the on and off-ramps for highways are unpleasantly short and narrow. Besides saving marginal costs on materials, I really cannot think of a reason for why this is so. Nevertheless, our subsequent driving up and down the winding country paths of the Croatian coast was equally challenging, with plucky cyclists acting as occasional obstacles and creating pileups long behind their backs.

Poreč is well-known for its UNESCO-listed Euphrasian Basilica, which traces its history to a secret 4^th century church. It has been the site of various construction projects from then until the nineteenth century, with various additions made to the compound throughout the ages. One of the basilica’s primacies is that it is the earliest example of a triple-apsed church in Western Europe. Its most remarkable artistic features are its mosaics, which date to various ages and range from bi-coloured floor details to bright and golden apse decorations.

While finding parking in Poreč had been easy, leaving the car park turned out to be a task worthy of an escape room. One of the payment machines was broken, the other froze up, and the office was not staffed. While helplessly returning to our car, I spotted a worker operating on the bars at the exit and ran towards her. I explained our situation to her, and she kindly accompanied me to the machines. Of course, by then the second machine had unfrozen and I felt rather silly, so I thanked the worker profusely and hurried away to another town where we could benefit from our anonymity.

By the time we started walking around Rovinj it had started to drizzle. The town was still quite pretty, but we did not spend as much time touring as we otherwise would have. Entering the centre through Balbi’s Arch, we walked along a few old streets and wandered up to the Church of Saint Euphemia before walking down again along different quaint paths. One interesting thing I have noticed throughout Istria is the number of dual-language signs in Croatian and Italian, which indicates the continued presence of an Italian minority in this historically diverse area. Either due to that or Italian tourism, many people here also seem to speak Italian fluently.

I was already a little exhausted by the time we departed again, but the final stretch of the road was still before us: we finished the day’s journey with a drive to Pula. The town is yet another ancient settlement, holding treasures like the Arch of the Sergii and a giant mosaic showing the Punishment of Dirce. Her crime was persecuting her niece, whose sons had been fathered by Zeus and who ended up killing Dirce by tying her to the horns of a bull. We also visited the Temple of Augustus, which was used as a church, granary, and archive throughout the town’s long history.

After visiting the temple, we climbed up to Fortress Kaštel, a seventeenth-century defensive structure built by the Venetians. The Castello – and especially the tower within it – offers good views of the surrounding town, including Pula Cathedral, Saint Anthony’s Church, and the Roman Amphitheatre. Our steps led to the last of these, briefly stopping at Tito’s Park, which commemorates the erewhile Yugoslav leader and his fellow partisans. As for the Amphitheatre, I was impressed by how giant and well-preserved it was, allowing people to sit down in the cavea and contemplate the bloodlust their ancestors must have felt watching slaves battle each other to the death.