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Pola – Pula

Colonia Pietas Iulia Pola, Pietas Iulia

city · Istria County, Croatia

What it is
Pula was the Roman colony of Pola, founded under Caesar at the head of a wide bay in southern Istria, and a remarkable amount of it still stands: an amphitheatre with its outer wall complete, a temple on the forum, an honorary arch and several of the town gates, all within a kilometre of each other in the modern centre.
What you’ll see
The stops each have their own page: the Pula Arena, the amphitheatre; the Temple of Augustus on the forum; the Arch of the Sergii at the end of the main street; and the Small Roman Theatre on the slope of the central hill.
Worth the trip?
Yes. It is the Arena — a complete amphitheatre wall — that makes it worth planning a trip around, but the rest turns a single monument into a Roman town you can walk through: a temple, an arch, gates, a theatre and a mosaic floor, all in everyday streets and most of them free.
Getting there & cost
The point on the map is the forum, the town's main square; the Arena, the arch and the gates are all within a kilometre of it on foot. Paid car parks are mapped about 110 m and 220 m from the forum (OpenStreetMap).FreeHours, tickets and parking
An aerial view of a coastal town of red roofs around a wide blue bay, with a shipyard on an island in the harbour, wooded islands beyond, and an oval Roman amphitheatre standing out among the buildings in the foreground.
Pula from the air; the Arena is at the bottom, the old town on the hill to its left. · Photo: Orlovic · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A Roman gateway with two equal round arches under one carved cornice, standing at the edge of a street with a stone wall on its left, trees behind and a paved path leading through.
The Twin Gates (Porta Gemina), one of the gates of the Roman town walls, rebuilt in the early Empire. · Photo: Georg Karl Ell · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Close view of a weathered stone arch against a blue sky, with a worn relief of a bearded head at the crown of the arch and a small plant growing from a crack.
The head of Hercules carved on the Gate of Hercules, the oldest surviving gate of the Roman town. · Photo: Carole Raddato · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Walking route

HPola1234
Schematic, generated at build time from each stop's coordinates; no streets are drawn. Some positions are approximate, so the route is a guide, not a path. Open on the interactive map →

Walk it in this order

About 1.4 km and 17 minutes of walking, plus time at each stop.

  1. 1
    Pula Arena

    amphitheatre

    Ticketed

  2. ↓ ≈ 7 min walk

    2
    Small Roman Theatre, Pula

    theatre

    Free

  3. ↓ ≈ 3 min walk

    3
    Arch of the Sergii

    site

    Free

  4. ↓ ≈ 7 min walk

    4
    Temple of Augustus

    temple

    Ticketed

Walking times are estimates: the straight-line distance × 1.3 for streets, at 80 m a minute.

The stops

  1. The pale limestone outer wall of the amphitheatre seen from the pavement, three storeys of arches and square windows rising against a blue sky, with a tall cypress in front.

    Photo: Olgierd Rudak · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    Stop 1 · amphitheatre · Istria County

    Pula Arena

    The oval measures about 132 by 105 m, and the wall rises to 32.45 m at its highest (the operator; en.wikipedia).

  2. Tiers of stone seats rising in a curve up a hillside behind a green lawn, with the paved stage area and its low walls in the foreground and pine trees on the ridge above.

    Photo: Orlovic · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    Stop 2 · theatre · Istria County

    Small Roman Theatre, Pula

    The foundations of the stage building and the semicircular auditorium, its seating partly cut into the living rock of the slope, with the stage and the actors' area on the flat side (the museum; hr.wikipedia).

  4. A small Roman temple on a high podium with a flight of steps, its porch of tall Corinthian columns carrying a carved frieze and a triangular pediment, with visitors standing on the square in front.

    Photo: Berthold Werner · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    Stop 4 · temple · Istria County

    Temple of Augustus

    The temple is about 13 m high, 8.5 m wide and 17.65 m long: a closed shrine behind a porch of six Corinthian columns, four of them across the front.

What is there today

The stops each have their own page: the Pula Arena, the amphitheatre; the Temple of Augustus on the forum; the Arch of the Sergii at the end of the main street; and the Small Roman Theatre on the slope of the central hill.

Between them, the town itself is Roman underneath. The walls, built as soon as the colony was founded, followed the shoreline round the foot of the hill, and parts of their gates survive. The Gate of Hercules is the only one kept in its original late-Republican form: a single arch set at an angle to the wall, with a bearded head of Hercules and his club carved at its crown and, beside them, the names of the colony’s first two magistrates, Calpurnius Piso and Cassius Longinus. The Twin Gates survive as rebuilt in the early Empire, two equal arches under one richly carved cornice; both gates were buried under the collapsed wall in the 18th century (the museum). Behind Sergijevaca 12, on the main street of the Roman town, the mosaic of the Punishment of Dirce lies where it was found in 1958–59: the dining-room floor of a wealthy town house, of the late 2nd or 3rd century, with the myth of Dirce torn apart by a bull at its centre (the museum).

Is it worth the trip?

Yes. It is the Arena — a complete amphitheatre wall — that makes it worth planning a trip around, but the rest turns a single monument into a Roman town you can walk through: a temple, an arch, gates, a theatre and a mosaic floor, all in everyday streets and most of them free.

Getting there

The point on the map is the forum, the town’s main square; the Arena, the arch and the gates are all within a kilometre of it on foot. Paid car parks are mapped about 110 m and 220 m from the forum (OpenStreetMap). The Arena and the Temple of Augustus charge admission and have their own hours; the arch, the gates and the Dirce mosaic are in the street, and the mosaic is reached from the back, through the car park south of the Graz city park (the museum). The Archaeological Museum of Istria is closed while a new permanent display is prepared.

Visiting details

Tickets
Free
Parking
Paid surface car parks about 110 m and 220 m from the forum (OSM way/138697518 and way/138697516, fee=yes).
On foot
At the parking

Before you go

  • The Archaeological Museum of Istria is closed while its new permanent display is prepared; the Arena, the Temple of Augustus and the museum's other sites stay open (the museum).

History

The Romans conquered Istria in 177 BC. Pola became a colony between 46 and 45 BC, under Julius Caesar, on the site of an older hillfort of the Histri, and at its height had about 30,000 inhabitants. Having sided with Caesar’s assassins in the civil war of 42 BC, it was destroyed after Octavian’s victory and then rebuilt, taking the name Colonia Pietas Iulia Pola Pollentia Herculanea; it belonged to Venetia et Histria, a region of Roman Italy (en.wikipedia; the museum). Two reigning Caesars were executed here, Crispus in 326 and Constantius Gallus in 354, and the town became a bishopric in 425. In 476 it was all but destroyed by Odoacer; it then passed to the Ostrogoths and, from 540, to Byzantine Ravenna, under which it prospered again as a naval port (en.wikipedia).

More photographs

A Roman floor mosaic of geometric panels, lozenges, stars and meanders in red, black and white, with a central figured panel showing a struggle between figures and a bull.
The mosaic of the Punishment of Dirce, from the dining room of a Roman town house. · Photo: Georg Karl Ell · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

  • The ruined corner of a Roman temple built of large squared stone blocks, carrying fragments of a carved cornice, standing on a lawn among old stone houses.

    Photo: Maesi64 · CC0 · Commons

    44 km · city · Istria County

    Parentium – Poreč

    The town plan still shows the shape of the Roman castrum, and the two main streets, the Decumanus and the Cardo Maximus, keep their original lines.

  • The apse of a church covered in gold-ground mosaics, a row of standing apostles above an arch framed with round portrait medallions, and in the semi-dome below the Virgin enthroned with the Child between saints and angels.

    Photo: Carole Raddato · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Commons

    44 km · site · Istria County

    Euphrasian Basilica

    The whole episcopal complex survives: the basilica itself, an atrium surrounded by porticoes with a collection of carved stones, an octagonal baptistery, the bishop's palace and a later bell tower (en.wikipedia).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 197448CC BY
Wikipedia (en) — Pula (History)CC BY-SA 4.0
Arheološki muzej Istre — Gradske zidine s vratima (town walls and gates)licence not recorded
Arheološki muzej Istre — Mozaik s prikazom kažnjavanja Dirkelicence not recorded
Arheološki muzej Istre — visitor informationlicence not recorded