Day 110: Zadar

JULY 22 - We have a beach within a 10 minute walk, so this morning is beach day. What I’ve noticed about the beaches in Zadar is that there is not much in the way of sand. At best, the surface is composed of small rocks and gravel. Other areas termed ‘beaches’ are pure loose rock. Regardless, the demand for them is high and there is always a crowd. The city has also created concrete banks where people lounge, and can step into water that is already half a meter or so deep. Not quite the place to bring small children.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of sea life in the water, small fish and hermit crabs. Odette spends a few hours wading around. The water is warm. By noon, it really too hot to be there.

A bit on geography. Most countries have a logical form, bounded by such geographical features such as coastlines, major rivers, latitude/longitude lines, or mountain ranges/watershed boundaries. Croatia has a very unusual shape, shown below:

This is a very unlikely geography to have resulted from a group of people self-identifying as belonging to a single culture. Why such a big gap in the middle of it all, where Bosnia and Herzegovina is?

The northern and eastern boundaries follow cultural divisions between Croats and Slovenians, Hungarians, and Serbians that more or less make sense. However, the interior of the ‘crescent’ is a result of conflicts starting with the original Ottoman conquests of the region. The region of Bosnia and Herzegovina (which I will refer to from now on in this journal as ‘BiH’) was occupied by the Ottomans until the 17th Century. The Kingdom of Croatia (later Habsburg Kingdom of Croatia) was deemed of great importance to Christian Europe, specifically because it was on the front lines against the perceived threat of Islam.

At the close of the Great Turkish War in 1699, some of the area was lost by the Ottomans, as a result of the Treaty of Karlowitz. Part of the loss was from areas along the Adriatic coast (Dalmatia). However, Ottoman influence remained strong in an area known then as the Bosnia Eyalet (an eyalet being an Ottoman administrative unit).

Even much later, after the Ottoman Empire effectively collapsed and they formally retreated from the Balkans, the cultural changes wrought upon the region remained. While Croatia is currently about 84% Croat, their representation in what is now BiH makes up only a minority. The current borders, therefore, reflect how much cultural identity shifted in the period 1500-present, and represent the ‘best solution’ to an extremely complex intercalation of cultural and linguistic groups.

There is another complication to this, which is the extended coastline Croatia now calls their own, all the way down to Montenegro. Though this area is decidedly ‘Croatian’ now, the Dalmatian Coast was previously administered by the Venetians, as an extension of their Adriatic trading empire. Being Venice, they were interested only in coastal areas with good port access. The relinquishing of this coast by Venice occurred in 1797, to Napoleon and the Habsburg Austrians. In that sense, it never has formed a core part of what is historically Croatia.

We go into the old city again to eat lunch, but Odette looks to be running a fever, so she and Janet retreat to our apartment while I go to the archaeological museum.

The top floor of the museum gives a detailed overview of pre-historic sites in the country. One of the most important ones is Krapina, which is about 40 km north of Zagreb. I did see a sign for this while on the bus from Maribor. A large concentration of sites is on the Istrian Peninsula, and there are a few inland from Zadar. There are probably many sites now under the Adriatic, as the 10,000 year Mediterranean sea level was about 100 meters lower than today.

The Romans conquered and assimilated the region during three wars from 229 to 167 BCE. It was then known as Illyria, which does not refer to a specific kingdom or tribe, but a mix of small groups that inhabited the area from Slovenia down the coast to northern Greece. The name itself was given to them by the Greeks. The museum has a large Roman section, from when the city name was Iader. It is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Croatia. The Illyrians entered the Roman Empire early, and thus had a long time to adapt to Roman cultural influence. Later, the people of this region would become mixed with Slavic groups pushing in from the east and north of the Danube.

Zadar continued its status as a key Illyrian for many centuries, when it became capital, in about 860 CE, of the Dalmatian region of the Byzantine Empire. This is about the time that the Church of the Holy Trinity (now St. Donatus) was constructed. At one point, it was fortified by the Venetians when their trading empire included most of the Dalmatian coast.

Speaking of the Venetians, they still have a few structures standing in Zadar.