My Log 498 Jan 7 2015: Journey through Dalmatia --- 5: Diocletian, Roman emperor whose retirement palace in the city of Split is today the cosmopolitan centre of the Adriatic

The Peristyle of Diocletian's Palace, showing
entrance to the Emperor's quarters Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Head from a statue of Diocletian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My preferred method of travel, of visiting a place, is just to mooch about, ignoring the churches (I never visit churches, believing religions are the work of the devil) and museums, and concentrating instead on those sidewalk cafés from which one can  watch the world go by. I have to confess it is not the ideal way to see a city like Split, a metropolis of 200,000 people, which regards itself as the cosmopolitan centre of the Adriatic. It is a city that can boast of having already had, in its original location five kilometres from the present city, a population of 60,000, when it was first mentioned in history more than  2100 years ago.

Two shots of many taken by myself and my partner, Sheila, inside Diocletian's Palace, showing the excellent restoration of the walls

The present city’s claim to historical fame rests on Diocletian’s Palace, a huge affair which was built in the fourth century AD by a local boy made good, Diocles, or to give him his full Latin moniker Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus,  a Croatian who rose to be Emperor of Rome, and chose to return home to live after his retirement.

Everyone talks airily about  Diocletian’s palace, and yet I never met anyone in Croatia so far who talks about how it was that a man of such modest birth in an outlying territory of the empire, managed to accede to the halls of supreme power. So I have looked him up and since I found the account of his life and work in the Encyclopaedia Britannica so interesting, I have taken the liberty of reproducing some passages from it in the hope that it may interest anyone who reads this.

First of all until he acceded to power, he lived most of his life in army camps. He came to power because of his position in the Roman army, and not without performing some of the skulduggery normal to his times: for instance, apparently killing one of his rivals.  Once in power, however, he appears to have been mainly interested in reviving the Roman empire from its anarchistic and degenerated state, and with that object in mind he shared power with three other men on whom he also bestowed the title of emperor. As the Britannica writes:

“All his reforms led toward a kind of centralized and absolute monarchy that put effective means of action at his disposal. Thus, Diocletian designated the consuls; the senators no longer collaborated in the making of laws; the imperial counsellors (consilia sacra) were distributed among specialized offices, and their functions were strictly defined so that the power of the praetorian  prefects  (personal bodyguards to the emperor) was limited; the specialization of administrative work grew; and the number of bureaucrats increased. This was the beginning of the bureaucracy and technocracy that was eventually to overrun modern societies.”

In other words, he was a modern-minded kind of fellow, this Diocletian. Further:

“A conservative, Diocletian was concerned with the preservation of the ancient virtues: the obligation of children to feed their parents in old age; of parents to treat their children justly; of spouses to respect the laws of marriage; of sons not to bear witness against their fathers, or slaves against their masters; and of private property, creditor’s rights, and contract clauses to be protected. He forbade the use of torture if truth could be discovered otherwise and encouraged governors to be as autonomous as possible.”

And, finally, in summary of his achievements, the encyclopaedia writes:

“He may be accused of several things: of having been cruel, but his harshness was not the act of deep-seated brutality; of being miserly, but this miserliness was inspired by the desire to obtain resources for the state; of cutting a slightly muddle-headed, visionary figure, but these were the traits that led him to reflect on better methods of governing an immense territory; of having paved the way to bureaucracy and technocracy, but this was done with greater efficiency in view. Personally, Diocletian was a religious man. No doubt he did not manifest any unusual piety, but he always thought that the gods of the emperors governed the world. He exercised an absolute, divine right monarchy, and he surrounded it with majesty.”

The main fault held against him nowadays is that he persecuted the Christians, his persecutions giving rise not to their decline, but rather to a strengthening of their convictions. For myself I could wish that he might have strangled this religion at birth, so we would not be confronted with its numerous mistakes, and constant wars, and heavy hand on the personalities of individuals right into our own day. We might well have been better off without it, But there you go, we are stuck with what history has handed down to us.

The extremely ancient walls have been added to with modern
installations, as shown here, without affecting the overall
coherence of the total

Diocletian abdicated as emperor in 305  AD, after 21 years of power, and died, more or less in obscurity, six years later. Thereafter the palace, as it was called (though it was far more extensive than a mere palace) lay empty and abandoned for several centuries and was used only occasionally by, for example, some local people seeking shelter there from invading Croats. But from the seventh century, the palace has been used as a place of residence and business. It was virtually unknown to Europeans until in 1764 a Scottish architect, Robert Adam, and a French artist collaborated on  a book celebrating its ruins, a book whose influence later, for the first time, brought measured drawings into the design vocabulary of European architecture. At one time the palace housed as many as 9,000 people, but today, although there are many shops, restaurants and hotels within the walls, that has been reduced to 1,000, and there are now severe restrictions on what can and cannot be built within the walls.

Just outside the Palace walls, a resident has hung his/her washing,
adding a human touch to a beautiful building

Centrepiece today is the so-called peristyle an elegant open space that leads to the former emperor’s quarters. I will have no difficulty remembering this name, because I had a booking in one of the hotels, the Peristel, but when I arrived I found I had mistakenly made the booking for two nights later than the day we arrived, ready to take up residence. At my age, this is a humiliating mistake to make, suggesting the onset of a mild dementia. I comforted myself by remembering that the last time I made that sort of idiotic mistake had been when I was a young reporter in my home town of Invercargill, New Zealand, more than 60 years ago, when I was hauled on to the editorial carpet because I had reported that an accused person had pleaded guilty to murder, when I knew perfectly well that he had pleaded not guilty. What I had done was to omit the word “not” in my copy, and thereafter had failed to notice its admission when I reviewed my copy. 

Growing up in the south of New Zealand,
I never heard of garlic. But in Italian life,
 garlic is never far away, as this shot
of garlic sellers outside the walls shows

In exactly that way, I had booked two nights for Jan 1 and 2, had approved the booking when I made it, and yet had it in my mind --- never a doubt entering --- that the booking I made was for Dec 30 and 31. I know I will not last another sixty years, but I will never forget, for however long I may live,  the name of the hotel, the Peristel. Fortunately for us, they were able to find  a room for us on each of the two nights of our stay, but the experience --- I had to pay a hefty penalty for cancellation of my original booking --- has taught me that I have to check, and recheck my copy from here on.

Like Zagreb, Split is the site of an immense, and immensely impressive statue, at least three times the size of an ordinary man, which has been moved around from place to place, even removed during the Italian occupation of the town during the Second World War, but has been re-instated in a position not far from one of the gates. This statue is of a man known in history as Gregory of Nin (or Grgur Ninski) by dint of his having been bishop of Nin from 926 for three years. Exceptionally, in those days, he opposed the reigning Pope, and dedicated his main efforts to replacing Latin in the church services with the local Croatian language. He did not last long, having failed in a struggle with a neighbouring bishop, leading to the abolition of his bishopric. The sculptor, Ivan Mestrovic, is also a man of interest, widely recognized as one of the greatest sculptors of Europe during the days of such others as Rodin, Brancusi, Giacommetti. A village boy from the Dalmatian hinterland, he was spotted as a remarkable talent at the age of 16, educated in Vienna, and had become a sculptor of note by the First World War. Thereafter he moved back to the then-Yugoslavia, but during the Second World War he was arrested by the Ustache fascist government of Croatia, and after the war he moved to the United States. He was invited to return to Yugoslavia by Tito, but refused to live in a Communist country. He sent many of his works back to his home country, however, although taking up permanent residence in the United States. He died in 1962 at the age of 79.

The huge statue of Gregory of Nin, made by master sculptor
Ivan Mestrovic in 1926, stands just outside one of the Palace gates.
Gregory  defended the local language against Latin and the Pope in 926 AD.

We ended our 10-day tour of Dalmatia by sitting overlooking the wharf in Split, a busy port whose large ferry boats service the many islands in the vicinity.  We wandered around the Palace one last time, noting the curious juxtaposition of new buildings nestled in beside the ancient walls, of washing hanging in front of elegant buildings, of the various boutique shops, excellent restaurants and comfortable hotels now accommodated in this ancient shell.

We had expected the bus home to Dubrovnik to be crowded: but, as elsewhere, we are almost the only passengers, once again. The journey home was memorable only because a young woman approached me and said she knew me from Ottawa. The next day we introduced her to the wonders of the Gaffe --- one of the three Irish bars in Dubrovnik --- where a new owner has vastly improved the quality of the food on offer. Like so many other young people, traditionally, she was wandering around Europe, taking advantage of any good airline deal she could find.

A good place to end this series of articles would be where I started, with recognition of the ever-presence of the past when one travels in Europe. Here is a transcript of a wall plaque we came across in Split, testifying to the intense life lived in ancient times, in that very place on which we stood:

"Julius Nepos (430-480) was a Western emperor (474-480). During the last stage of the Western Roman Empire he reigned. At first, over Italy and adjoining areas held by the Western Empire. As of 475 he had influence only over Dalmatia, having been deposed and replaced with Romulus Augustus (in effect if not in law) in the rest of the western remnant. The Eastern Roman Empire continued to recognize Nepos as rightfull Western emperor to the end of his life. He was murdered by his soldiers in Diocletian Palace on the April 25 of 480. Nepos was therefore either the next to last or the last Western emperor depending on how one looks at that matter."

My Log 496 Jan 6 2015: Journey through Dalmatia --- 3: Piran, a delightful little town in the northern Adriatic, untrammelled by mass tourism

Overview of Piran, Slovenia from its town-walls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A typical street in Piran taken looking out from the street our guest house was in. A small town, made up of streets like this.

In our effort to escape from Christmas, we took refuge in a small town, Piran, on the tiny piece of the Adriatic coast that has been allocated to Slovenia. To tell the truth, the disposition of this area of Istria --- which itself is a sort of undefined region at present divided between three countries, the third being Italy ---  is still undecided, for it is under an extremely detailed and heavily argued arbitration between Slovenia and Croatia.

However, they did celebrate Christmas in Piran, but not very vigorously, for even on Christmas day itself stalls were set up in the central square for a few modest artisans to offer their wares. This square was overhung temporarily by an enormous electrically-lighted violin, in honour of the town’s number one ancestor, Guiseppe Tartini, after whom the central square, and many other places in Piran,  is named. Tartini was born in Piran in 1692, died in Padua in 1770, a composer and one of the greatest violinists of the eighteenth century,  celebrated also for having  owned one of the original Stradivarius violins.

As part of their seasonal celebrations, the residents of Piran erected the large violin shown here overhanging the statue on Tartini Square in honour of their favorite son, Guiseppe Tartini, regarded as one of the premier European violin soloists of the eighteenth century. The violin is dimly visible in this daylight photo, but at night, lit up, it made a very striking image. 
Below: Another  shot showing the extremely tight-packed nature of Piran's streets and buildings. The little sculptured head on the building on the right is typical of much Italianate architecture, and testifies to Piran's Italian heritage.

Leading into Tartini square are a multiplicity of narrow streets, inaccessible to motor vehicles, which are forced to use only the broader roadways that surround the town, built on a small peninsula which it entirely fills. Even these roadways carry as many pedestrians as vehicles, so there is about the town an irrevocably  leisurely air that seemed to pervade everything that happened there during our five days of residence.

I had booked far in advance --- I first read about the town in a travel article in the Globe and Mail  of Toronto --- and the accommodation that had caught my eye was called the Pacha Mama (meaning Mother Earth in an indigenous language of Latin America) Guest House Pleasant Stay, to give it its full name. It turned out to be hidden away, only a few yards from the central square in an old building which, inside, had been totally revamped by its Swedish owner. We arrived after dark at the end of a long bus ride from Zagreb, and our first contact with the little town  was extremely agreeable. Walking along the harbour front, I asked a passing man if he could direct me to the street in which the guest house was located. He indicated it roughly enough, and we set out to find it. A few minutes later the man I  had asked came running back to join us, carrying his GPS and insisting on accompanying us to the very door, where an agreeable young man called Luka was awaiting our arrival.

Luka told us that, since we had booked for five nights, and there were no other guests, they had decided to offer us a larger room on the fourth floor, if that did not inconvenience us.  Four or five years ago, we would have jumped at the chance, but those five years have taken their toll of us so that the prospect of lugging our cases up four flights of stairs daunted us, and we rejected the offer.  Cheerfully enough, Luka installed us in our booked room on the first floor, but it was very small, and we decided to take their offer. So up we went to find a  much larger room under the eaves, and with all the modern technology Sweden could provide. For example, the bathroom floor was heated by a mysterious apparatus on the wall, which I never did succeed in figuring out. Below that was an even more daunting set of buttons regulating the room heat. It said the ambient heat was 29 degrees C, far too high for overnight comfort, and it never varied although we did get an accompanying button down to 17 degrees without making any discernible difference to the temperature. Even the lighting held its mysteries: maybe simple for the Swedish mind, but a bit much for a couple of old codgers from an earlier generation. Another unusual aspect of the place was that although Luka turned up for three hours the following morning, at noon he disappeared, and for the rest of our time there we virtually had the whole building to ourselves. After all it was the out-of-season holidays, and it was enjoyable to know that whatever noise we made did not discommode any other guests.

Although it is difficult to recall exactly what we did while in Piran, the little town never did start to pall on us, and I have no hesitation in recommending it for anyone looking for a relaxing and quiet holiday.  It was delightful walking along its interconnecting narrow streets, although one had to be careful, because the cobblestones are extremely ancient, and irregular, and could be classed as traps for the unwary elder. While the architecture wasn’t remarkably beautiful, its coherence was always pleasing, and one could tell that a serious effort had been made to preserve in good condition the inheritance from their long past.

As I remarked in an earlier piece, one is never far from the past in this area of Europe.  Istria, of which the Piran peninsula is part, was originally inhabited by tribes called the Histri, made up of farmers, hunters and fishermen, who were regarded by the Romans as fierce pirates, whom they took a long time to conquer.

They became part of the Roman empire in 177 BC, and were so ruled most of the time in the next thousand years, although modified from time to time by Byzantine control, and incursions of Franks and Slavs. I discovered from the tourist books that both Slovene and Italian are recognized official languages in this part of the country, which is a recognition of the varying ethnic make-up of Istria --- sometimes with Italian majorities, later with Slovene, and always with a good healthy mix of ethnicities. In 1945 91 per cent of the town’s people were Italian-speaking, but this changed radically after 1947, when the Independent Territory of Trieste as it was called, was incorporated into Italy and the southern part was granted to Yugoslavia, leading to an exodus of Italians.

Slovenia is a small country of almost  2,000,000 inhabitants, and a number of locals indicated to us that they could hardly expect to win the long-running argument about the borders in the Bay of Piran with the more aggressive and larger country of Croatia, although they were living in hope.

Piran is said to be one of Slovenia’s primary tourist attractions, but the many piles of fishing nets on the wharves indicated that this is one small town that has not gone overboard for tourism unlike its neighbour two or three miles along the way, Portoroz, which appears to have attracted all the expected horrors that one can expect with mass tourism (including four casinos, probably the kiss of death).

These three pictures show Piran's busy little fishing port, with their boats carrying the black marker flags to indicate their nets, and the piles of nets ready for action

Action shot of me eating a Figaro.
a struggle I valiantly bore to a successful conclusion 

I should mention they have several excellent restaurants: we had one amusing experience when we entered a small coffee house late at night and asked for a coffee, indicating also what looked like a chocolate bar. “It is very hard,” he said, indicating the chocolate bar.Never mind, I said, I will have it. “It’s very hard,” he said, shaking his head, almost insisting we not buy it. I persisted, confidently bit into it, and made as little impression on it as if it had been a stone. As he said, it was very hard. Eventually I did manage to make an impression on it, but the danger of cracking one of my few remaining teeth was always evident. Still, I managed to get it eaten, and asked the young man what it was called “Figaro,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, “hard, very hard.” A chocolate bar called Figaro?
Finally, we kept returning to the same restaurant called Ivo, on the waterfront, one of the pleasantest and best restaurants we had struck in quite a long time. There we were served by an absolutely delightful waiter, an older person, a lifelong waiter, who took care of a large room, never made a note of the dishes ordered, never made a mistake, and even remembered the next day what he had served you the night before. I asked him his name. “Marino,” he said, “Sam Marino,” and laughed.  Later, I thought about it: I am almost sure he said San, not Sam, Marino, indicating the small country, one of the smallest in the world, which exists almost opposite Istria on the Italian side of the Adriatic, and which could almost be said to be a competitor with Piran for the tourist dollar.  Just the kind of joke the old guy would make
.

My Log 494 Dec 27 2015: Journey through Dalmatia --- 1; “Europe’s borders are a bother for them”: a voice from the past revived by experience of travelling through Europe

My Log 494 Dec 27 2015: Journey through Dalmatia --- 1; “Europe’s borders are a bother for them”: a voice from the past revived by experience of travelling through Europe

Schengen Agreement (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The cover design used for all treaties of the European Union. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I  remember that half a century ago I covered a British by-election in which a dear old squire of the shires, Sir Piers Debenham, memorably opposed British entry into the European Common Market, as it was then called, by waving above his head a copy of the Treaty of Rome, and crying, “The Europeans are bothered by their frontiers. We are not. We do not need this treaty, and we have to resist this old silly who governs us with his foolish policies.” The “old silly” in question was Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, who was more than slightly irritated when Sir Piers’s opposition ensured the election of the local Labour Party candidate, and the defeat of the pro-European candidate.

The current news from Europe fifty years later, as they desperately try to deal with the immense numbers of displaced people from Middle Eastern wars who are struggling to reach safety in continental Europe, indicates that their borders still are a trouble to them. In 1985 the three members of the Benelux treaty --- Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland --- meeting at a town called Schengen in Luxembourg, signed with France and Germany a treaty that today guarantees free movement between 26 of the 28 members of the European Union, putting into the pages of history the many centuries of warfare and discord that had riven Europe since time immemorial.

How could anyone not support such a movement, showing the best of statesmanship, and the best intentions of humanity? The Treaty of Schengen has developed until today it is no longer something that can be accepted or rejected by candidate members of the European Union, but has become one of the requirements that must be undertaken by any nation that wants to join the Union.

That it is now under enormous pressure is known to anyone who has been following the news, as refugees in unheard of numbers have simply poured across the oceans and the frontiers of Europe’s outlying countries in an effort to find a place where they can re-establish a decent human life. Germany has accepted a million refugees, while the United Kingdom, not a member of the Schengen area, has staunchly resisted taking anything like what might be considered a fair share of these desperate people. Greece and Italy have perforce made heroic efforts to accept people, most of whom they hope will be in transit to Germany or France. But outlying countries such as Rumania and Bulgaria have become nervous as Hungary and Poland, and new-member Croatia have chosen to close their borders to any more refugees, in the process erecting highly symbolic barbed wire barricades designed to stop people in their tracks. Meantime, the nations closest to Syria, from which most of the refuges have originated, countries like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, most of them with fragile overstretched economies already, have discovered so many newcomers among them that they have begun to wonder if they can preserve their own individual habits and customs.

For some years now I have been making almost yearly visits to Croatia to stay with a friend, and have always been struck by the irony that while most of the nations of Europe have agreed to abolish their borders, in the Balkans the people have recently fought wars designed to re-establish borders that had been all but forgotten for half a century or more.  One cannot travel far in Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, even Slovenia, without coming across a newly-minted border post, whose attendants seem basically indifferent to the passports that pass through their hands every day, and appear to have little interest in determining the motivations of the average traveller.

Whereas, in the old, Communist days of Yugoslavia, barriers between Croatia and Bosnia did not exist, now, a 30-mile ride out of Dubrovnik brings one to a border post, usually so vaguely delineated that you are never sure whether you are quitting one country, or entering the next. A couple of days ago I travelled from Zagreb, in the centre of Croatia, and its capital, towards Trieste, the Italian city, whose fate was determined after the Second World War when it was granted to Italy, while its close neighbour Fiume, now called Rijeka, was given to Yugoslavia, and is now in Croatia.  Since Croatia and Slovenia, former republics of the socialist state of Yugoslavia, are both now members of the European Union, one might have expected the bus to take the direct route north through Slovenia to its capital Ljubljana and then towards Italy. To my surprise, however, the bus skirted south of Slovenia all the way, moving across to Rijeka before striking north to a border crossing into Slovenia.

I am currently visiting a small town on this Slovenian coastline, Piran, situated in a piece of land just 46 kilometres wide, that is currently under arbitration between Slovenia and Croatia. So the fate of this little outlier to the coast is still up in the air.

My next move is to go on the one-hour bus ride to Trieste, but again I have been surprised to find that my expectation that buses would be plying the route every half hour or so was far from fulfilled. Only one bus goes in the morning, leaving at 6.45 am; and another in the late afternoon.  Are these small indications that the border problems between the nations of Europe are still not totally solved?

As a friend of mine says, having briefly introduced a subject: I will keep you informed.

My Log 495 January 5 2016: Journey through Dalmatia --- 2: Zagreb. Through a bleak landscape of karst topography to emerge in a civilized, beautiful old city, capital of a hopeful new state with ancient roots

Above, left:  Overview of a small market  in Zagreb, leading up to what they call the Old Town. 

Above, right: Only a few steps away, Croatian warrior hero  Ban Josip Jelacic (1801-1859) sits on his horse. The statue was erected in 1849, but was removed by Tito in 1947, and restored to its dominant place in 1990. Today Jelacic is regarded as a rebel in Austria, a traitor in Hungary, but a hero in Croatia.

  On Dec 21, four days before Christmas, I left Dubrovnik, where I am currently staying  for three         months, to travel by bus on a trip through an area that can be roughly called Dalmatia. My objective was to avoid being the grumpy old, Christmas-hating man sitting in the corner of a happy celebration with lots of yelling small children. Let them have it, I would be elsewhere.

I decided to go alone but my partner Sheila, a woman who moved to Tito’s Yugoslavia in the 1970s because, among other reasons, she wanted the schools to teach her children Marxism, rather than Christianity, decided to come along. And so we set off on an eight-hour trip of roughly 600 kilometres to Zagreb, the national capital, that we expected to take eight hours.

We also expected the bus to be crowded at that time of year, but in fact there were only eight or ten passengers, so we had plenty of room to stretch ourselves, which made the journey that much more comfortable. We had to travel north along the narrow strip of land by which Croatia manages to hug the coast, which gives that small country the majority of seaward-facing areas that have been bones of contention between various great powers for century after century. Probably 100 miles or so along the way we began to travel through what is known as karst country, a sort of landscape that covers much of Croatia, on which only low-lying bushes have managed to secure the means of life, its bleakness making one wonder how any humans have ever been able to scrape a living from their lands. The wonder of it was that the motorway on which we travelled through this bleak landscape was of super-modern construction, with dozens of well-constructed tunnels ---  a road that could only have been built at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and yet one that seemed, for mile after mile, to be serving no discernible population.

Anyway, eventually, we came to the national capital, a city of which I once read that one of the old-time travellers from the Middle East remarked that upon hitting Zagreb, one was at last aware of being in Europe.

Sheila, of course, had a friend in Zagreb whom she had known in the old days. When Vicko Krampus had arrived in London in the 1970s he was a wide-eyed student from Yugoslavia, agog at the freedoms and carefree attitudes he found in London. And when we met him, now a professor at a Zagreb university, he was anxious to show us the glories of the city he loves. He took us through the seven central squares  --- generically known locally from their shape as the Green Horseshoe --- around which are based the centres of political power. He took us into a hotel, the Esplanade, which was as ornate and beautiful as any hotel I have ever seen, and which had been built especially to serve the old Orient Express, the train  across Western Europe to Istanbul that was patronized by the gentry in the old days. Evidently, to judge by the atmosphere inside the hotel, much the same rules apply today, for as we entered we were confronted by a formally-dressed personage sitting at a seat ready to interrogate everyone who passed his way. Because our guide was known to him, we were allowed to wander through its great public rooms but I felt sure we would never have passed the reception area without our guide. The high rooms were dominated by enormous mirrors that enhanced the feeling of ornate magnificence, but for all this, there were some fairly cozy areas where people were sitting taking their coffee. And outside we stepped on to an enormous terrace --- this right in the middle of a busy city: how had it ever preserved so much space in so crowded an environment? --- on which one could image in the summer, crowds of customers listening to orchestras and relaxing with friends.

Later, he took us also into a museum where rests the oldest example of writing ever discovered in Croatia, from pre-Christian times, the details of whose message, unfortunately, I have forgotten. Later we wandered alone through a colourful market, with its multi-coloured fruits and vegetables, kitchen implements and clothing. It was, in fact, not unlike the Jean Talon market in Montreal, equally large and colourful.

But what Montreal lacks is this effortless timelessness, for only steps away from the market is the central square with a dramatic statue of Josip Jelacic (1801-1859), on a horse, a statesman, diplomat and soldier who defended Croatia and the Croatian language, while trying to maintain his independence in the peculiar circumstances of the nineteenth century with its Austro-Hungarian empire falling into decline, and coming to an end in the First World War. Originally Jelacic's sword pointed to Hungary, in recognition of his having fought Hungarian authority, but when it was restored the statue was turned around, so that now the sword points southwards (to nothing in particular).  I have never been more aware than I was on this trip of the presence of the ancient past, echoes of which seemed to pop up wherever we went, although I am prepared to entertain the idea that this is all in my head, because the recent Yugoslav wars were fought according to the tensions, hatreds, and loyalties handed down from history to their present-day combatants.

In fact, when I first wrote this piece I had been told the statue was of another earlier Croatian hero, namely Nicola Subic Zrinski,  a warrior who also fought what might be called the occupying powers, but three centuries earlier. In 1566 his 2,300 soldiers battled the Ottoman force of 102,000 under Suleiman the Magnificent. Zrinski died nobly on the battlefield a few days after the Sultan himself died of a cerebral haemorrhage. (This Sultan is the one I have referred to in an earlier post, number 493, of Dec 15, mentioned by Dr. Amanda Foreman in her magnificent BBC series on the ascent of women. He entered this story because, although Sultans were forbidden to marry, he nevertheless married a girl called Roxelan from his harem, who turned out to be one of the great feminists of all history, transforming the situation of women in the lands under Suleimen’s rule.)

A curiosity in Zagreb is the funicular railway, which takes one only on a four minute ride that could as easily be walked in 10 minutes. But people seem to use it, tribute, I guess, to the innate laziness of most people. Up there after the ride one comes upon another aspect of the city, lots of handsome old buildings, quite a few streets, the odd church, and so on. We walked down, back into the central city and that night Visko took us to an excellent restaurant just above the market, a place that is used by agencies to dine their visiting tourists, but one that looked like it had always existed, and where the standards were kept as high as possible. We tried two restaurants in Zagreb, the other called Vinodolo, and both were excellent.

These two buildings, of medium height and elegantly designed, seem to be typical of  many European cities  in the modern world. These two are in the upper reaches of Old Town Zagreb, but I saw others elsewhere, especially in Trieste, Italy, whose downtown is full of such rows of buildings.