Zadar

The walled city of Zadar has been around for a long time, with evidence of habitation dating back to the Stone Age.  Today it is a beautiful city with narrow cobblestone streets, churches, coffee shops and high-end boutique stores.  To get ready for a day of exploring we fortified ourselves with the breakfast provided by Hotel Niko, so here is the food shot of the day:

After stuffing ourselves we waddled out to our little red VW Up, threw in our bags and took off for the city.

The actual town of Zadar was originally settled by Lilburnians, an Illyrian tribe that controlled the area in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. (Lonnie - weren't you once a Lilburnian?)  It became an important Roman city, but it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 6th century.  The Goths ruled Zadar in the 9th century, when the St. Donatus Church was built.

The St. Donatus church is shown above on the right.  In the foreground is some of the reconstructed foundations of the old Roman city, with some of the broken architectural pieces displayed.  The next photo is a close-up of the base of the St. Donatus church, where they used the rubble from the destroyed Roman town as the foundation of the church.

One unique feature in Zadar is the Sea Organ, designed by a Croatian artist/architect named Nikola Basic.  It is a series of pipes, like a pipe organ, built into the waterfront, with the only evidence of it being a series of small holes in the marble walkway.  The motion of the waves makes random harmonic sounds that can be heard from some distance away.  Really unique and pleasant to hear!

Back in the old city we came across the Cathedral of St. Anastasia, a beautiful church with the best gargoyle I've ever seen.

On the right side of the church, where it meets the adjacent building, is the cutest little happy cow gargoyle.

After a few hours of roaming around Zadar we left the old walled city through this gate.

This is part of the defensive wall around Zadar. Unfortunately these walls did not protect Zadar from extensive damage during Croatia's war for independence in the early 90s.  Early in the war the southern part of Croatia was cut off from the rest of the country near Zadar and the town was bombarded with artillery shells by the Yugoslav Army and Serbian separatists.  After over a year of isolation the area was rejoined to Croatia following a battle at the nearby bridge in Maslenica.  In an earlier post Annette talked about the signs in the central plaza in Zagreb telling people not to forget the heros from Maslenica.  We didn't really see much evidence of damage in Zadar, so apparently everything has been repaired or rebuilt in the past 20 years.