Old town scenes

Tempting as it is to post yet another photograph from the western promenade of Zadar, I think I'll regret it if I don't post a few more from the rest of the city. What's great about this little city is that you can wander around and end up taking a slightly different route from A to B than you've taken before and come across a new area. This happened today, although Caffe Bar Zlatni Kucic (golden something - not sure what, but zlatni is gold) is where we got coffees one morning for just 5 KN each. That's just a fraction over 50p. And very nice they were too. The normal tariff is 7 or 8 KNs for a single espresso - double that for double. This is in the Varos district of the city, full of tiny streets, cafes, and places for the students (the university is nearby).

I've been reading up a bit more about the history of the city, and the various changes that it has gone through since it was founded nearly 3000 years ago. It was very badly damaged by Allied bombing in the second world war, when under Italian occupation (actually it was given to the Italians after the first world war and thus not included in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), but it ended up part of the second Yugoslavia after the second world war and suffered further damage in 1991 and afterwards, during the hostilities between the Croats and the Serbs. One product of the second world war damage is the very open western promenade. Old photographs from the end of the nineteenth century (when it was under Austria) show that the western promenade was lined with fin-de-siecle mansions and hotels, of which very few survive today. These in turn were only built after the fortifications created by the Venetians were torn down in the nineteenth century to create the promenade and a pier (my favourite pier) from which sailing ships would depart.