ZADAR – CITY OF THE PAST AND THE POWER OF RENEWAL

«On the eve of Martinmas they arrived at Zadar in Croatia and saw that the city was enclosed with high walls and high towers and that in vain would they seek a finer and richer city. And when the pilgrims saw it, many of them marvelled and said one to the other: How could this city be taken by force if the Lord himself took it not?»

With these words the french chronicle Geoffroi de Villehardouin in his «The Conquest of Constantinopole» describes the arrival of the Crusaders at Zadar and, after that, the way it was taken. The chronicle is an interesting description of this 1202. adventure un which Zadar suffered, as often before and afterwards. There was not a single good reason why the Crusaders «allies in the faith» the defenders of Christendom from the pagans, should have taken and pillaged a christaian city. But there are allways some important reasons where wars, pretensions and conquests are concerned. The conquerors do not exert themselves to make their justifications, logical or convincing. Power and force are sufficient unto themselves. However this max be, conquest and destruction, denationalisation and return to the mainstream, continuity and discontinuity are constants in the history of Zadar.

From the downfall of Salona in the 6th century, Zadar was the first city of Dalmatia. Here Byzantium, Venice, the French and Austria rulled. And before them, from the 7th century BC, were the Iaderans, the Romans and the Ostrogoths. The most increadible alliances were made here: the French, the Angevins, Venice, Pisa, the Croatian and the Croatian-Hungarian kings. In the Zadar hinterland, on the only sufficiently large fertile plain in the whole Dalmatia, from Nin to Knin, the medieval kningdom of Croatia was created. All the roads of interior lead towards Zadar. A city that tha Avars had shrunk from, in front of the walls of which the Crusaders had called upon the divine aid, which Venice lost and won several times, was forced by an unhappy combination of historical circumstances to yield its pride of place in Dalmatia to Split.

When the reconstruction of the economy began after World War II, Zadar litterally rose from the ashes and avoided the heavy polluters, symbols of the socialist construction. Its orientation to the processing industry and tertiary occupations won for it the position of the most successfull city during the waning of the former Yugoslavia. With no heavy industry of pollution, with the fantastic natural base, and three national parks in its immediate environs, it seemed that Zadar was on the way to win back its old fame. But this was not to be. Seemingly in accord with the laws of things, in some horoscope in which the stoy of Zadar with its breaks in the continuity might be a model, a new hiatus occurred. War, destruction, human casualities, devastation, refugees, unemployment, reconstruction, return – the preparations for a new ascent in the inescapble Zadar manner.

Why has Zadar been an apple from which everyone wants a bite? This is obviously to do with its geographical and hence strategic position. In such a position on the coast, an important city just had tio come into being. It seemes that as far back as the Liburnians it was known that this was a place out of the reach of the a north-easterly winds. The largest and the most fertile open space in Dalmatia lies in the hinterland of Zadar, with all the most important and shortest roads to the interior going through it. In front of the city is a most complex defensive wall, a labyrinth of islands, it is difficult to navigate without Ariadne's assistance. Finally through ingenuity of the builders, on today's peninsula a defensive system was built such that it could be mastered, to use Villehardouin'a cynical statement, only with divine aid. Whether the currents of economic power flowed by land or sea (most often in concert), continuity and progress, inspite of all the interruptions, where assured. The position of the Adriatic was the cause of both prosperiy and decline. Every who wanted to control the coast and the Adriatic had first of all to weaken Zadar.

Zadar is the town with many interruuption in its continuity, constantly however returning to the paths of fame and glory. The demographic and national structure of the city has constantly changed through history. Several times, against its will, it has changed population and official language. From Liburnian and predominantly Roman city to a totally Croat town, from the most powerfull city on the eastern coast of the Adriatic to only the third in size, there has been a tangled journey, full of loses and desasters. But what has remained a constant, on which the city has allways built its power to renew itself, is its acceptionally favourable position on the coast and its being, spritually and physically, a part of the Mediterranean ethos. Today it is hard to imagine any serious study of Croatia as a part of Europe and the Mediterranean without taking account of Zadar.

It is hard in a single place, without offending a sense of moderation, to enumerate all the things Zadar is first in, or for which it is well-known.

The rich hinterland of Ravni Kotari, already mentioned, was a prime fact behind the founding of the state of Croatia in the medieval period. More prosaically, this plain has for centuries pilled Zadar's tables high with its fruits. Its trade mark is maraschino, a liquor served in the drawing rooms the world arround, as well as the picturesque produce market (piazza) in the City itself.

The islands of Zadar, their number, distribution, the length of the littoral, the extent of the waters arround the city, their richness in fish, the biological and anthropological diversity, have been since ancient times the trade mark of Zadar. Telašćica Bay is the birth place of the Croatian fishing industry (955). Zadulini, inventing fishing with the assistance of the lamp at the beginning of the 16th century, made the waters arround Zadar the most important fishing grounds in the adriatic, while at the beginning of the 20th century, Lorini rounded off this fishing cycle with the invention of a new kind of a net. The inventive genious of the Zadar fishing tradition can be seen today in fish and fish-fry farming, with practically the best stocked fish market on the Adriatic.

The Zadar islands are a park of a national values of the first rate importance. Here mass has for centuries been celebrated in Croatian, a rare privilage within the Catholic church. By keeping their registers in a Glagolithic, a special kind of Croatian script, the Glagolithic priests, most numerous in the Zadar islands, preserved one of the most valuable parts of the national heritage from oblivion.