Pula - Croatia

Pola is the dominant and largest city center on the Istrian peninsula. The city is situated at the head of a wellindented and deep bay which, sinceits founding, had given it the inmportant role of being a good port and a secure anchorage. The geographical position, located only a bit to the west of the southernmost cape of the Istrian peninsula, assigned the city in many historical periods aspecial strategic sigificance. This was particularly true of times when the main routes along the Adriatic seacoast were determined by the technology of sailing.

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Webcam Pula Croatia

The harbour-owing to ist dimensions and prominent position, the islets in the harbour which divide the harbour space into a number of basins and its excellent approach from the opensea and the possibility of easily fortifying the coast – these are some of the reasons why even today maritime scholarship hold Pola harbour to be one of the best and the most secure natural ports in the world.The founding of the city as is often the case in the history of Mediterranean places, because of intermittent and complex migrations, contacts and intermingling of civilisations, is enveloped in legends.

The most famous of these is the one that conntects the founding of the city to the myth of the Argonauts and according to which the city was founded by the Greeks, refugees from Kolida who made it to the istrian coast. Verses by the famous Greek poet Kalimah refer to this event. The origin of this legend must surely be sought in the connections the Illyrian inhabitants of Istria successfully established with Greek sailors and the intensive trade with the Greeks, evinced by numerous argheological findings.


The area around Pola was inhabited in the environs of Pola while the city itself rose on an Illyrian hill-fort which was situated on the hill overlooking the bay ( today this is the citadel). The name itself – Pola – is of Illyrian origins and designated some kind of hydrographic concept, probably a water spring or perhaps the city as such. Illyrian Pola existed in the shadow of the more powerful Illyrian center Nesactium which was situated in its immediate vicinity and was the political, administrative, military and religious center of the whole region. The Roman conola quest of the Istrian peninsula was of special significance to the development of Pola and its rapid urban expansion. After 177 BC the new Roman order was in force and Pola and its harbour served as a Roman bridgehead for further conquests of the neighbouring areas. In the second half of the Ist century it became a powerful military stronghold and finally an important trading emporium and harbour for the exchange of various goods. Around 43 BC Pola received the status of a colony. During the Civil war Pola first sided with Pompei and was subsequently severly destroyed by Ceasers supporters. When the conflict continued after Ceasers violent death Pola sided with his killers Brutus and Cassius so that it again suffered heavy damages at he hands of the military forces of the triumphant triumvir of Octavius, Anthony and Lepid. Because of the strategic and economic significance of the city, Octavius, now become the emperor Augustus, rebuilt Pola.