originally a Roman port city on the 'Pirate Coast 'of Illyria conquered by Julius Caesar in 1st Century BC, it is now a Croatian town of 75,000 with landward rampart fortifications and substantially surviving seaward walls.
Despite 2nd World War damage, when it was within Mussolini’s Italy, its architectural heritage includes Roman remains and a Byzantine Paleo-Christian Cathedral. Conquered by western Crusaders at the behest of Venice in 1202, in remained in Venetian hands from the 15th Century until 1799. Thereafter French, Austro-Hungarian and Italian overlords all left their mark. As Yugoslavia broke -up in the 1990s, the city was attacked by Serb (JNA) forces. Surviving, it hosted the Walled Towns Friendship Circle's 1999 Symposium.
City website –not found
Wikipedia entry unauthenticatedZadar (as Iadera) features on the Peuteringer Tafel - a map of the Roman Empire from the 3rd Century AD, copied in the middle ages and preserved in the Vienna State Library
Baedeker : Autriche (fr)1902 p400 (as Zara)
Photos from 1999 (dmb)
Zadar 1999 restoring ramparts |
No comments:
Post a Comment