Zara

“It was in the end of April, on the eleventh day after leaving Spalato, that I again came in sight of the capital. The land around me was stony, and the broad and high walls of loose stones shewed that the cultivator had more trouble in getting his fields clear of them than in procuring material for his fences. […]. Although the environs of the city are far from being attractive, yet the villas and gardens dotted on both sides of the Sound, and the capital itself (originally a peninsula, and now an artificial island), rising out of the bright blue waters, and fenced all round with bastions and curtains, surmounted by alleys of trees, were a welcome sight after the monotonous glare of the rocky soil around me. […]. Traversing the outworks, I found myself at the so-called gate of Terra Firma; but the country car I had hired from Bencovatz, after dismissing my mountain horses, was blocked up for full five minutes from the throng of peasants with their carts and cars; for the town of Zara can contain no more than the six or seven thousand inhabitants within the walls, and the real population strictly belonging to the capital is scattered in the villages of the Sound to the amount of twenty or thirty thousand. The only gate to the land is this Porta di Terra Firma; so that, like mice and rats, the people of Zara always go out and in at the same hole. But truly such a noble hole as any city in the world might be proud of. And the Zaratines, restrained by the fortifications from spreading the town outwards, build their houses a story higher than elsewhere in Dalmatia. […]. “This is a small Venice”, said I, as we ascended the stairs to my room. “A very small Venice indeed, sir”, said the landlord; “a Venice without St. Marco and the Palazzo Ducale” (pp. 45-48).

Walking in the town is very pleasant, especially in hot weather (for in May the thermometer was for some days at 80° in the shade), in consequence of the narrowness and coolness of the streets, and the absence of the noise and inconvenience of carriages. Not far from the gate of Terra Firma is the principal public square, the Piazza dei Signori, smaller in size than that of Spalato, but far more neat and elegant. I spent six weeks in Zara, and there was scarce a day in which I could resist the seduction of standing in the middle of the Piazza, and deriving a calm, solid pleasure from the contemplation of its lineaments, and feeling that, if they were reproduced on a larger scale in some frequented European capital, the edifice would become one of the most renowned in the world (p. 49). 

In the Casino, you find the prim, clean-shaven Austrian officer, with his stiff neck, reading the Allgemeine Zeitung, or the young native noble, wearing moustachios, grave in manners, and literary and philosophical in his tastes, is poring over the Journal des Débats; while down stairs is Count Carpe Diem, a genteel figure of the old school, with incomparably easy and attractive manners. Light-hearted as a school-boy, he misses no play, and has just been enlivening his moral and intellectual faculties with a long morning at dominos; he is now skimming through the Gazzetta of Venice, making his remarks aloud, while the wealthy maraschino-maker beside him is alternately immersed in the Austrian Lloyd’s Journal, or plunged in a brown study on the last rise of sugars in Trieste (p. 50).

The harbour is shallow, and vessels of above three hundred tons cannot enter, but must lie on the other side of the town in the open sound; yet there is a surprising number of small coasting vessels; and could Austria only adopt a different system of Customs, their number might be considerably increased. The principal trade of Zara is the import of manufactures from Trieste, and the export of maraschino, anchovies, almonds, and other productions peculiar to the district. At the other side of the town is the market-place, or Piazza delle Erbe, that is the favourite resort of the country people; instead of a tempting display of gloves and cravats, or female finery, as in the environs of the Piazza dei Signori, you have here the cheap shop of the common people, the coil of new ropes, the pile of macaroni, and the needful of a rural household. The quarter is the humblest in Zara, both in houses and population (pp. 52-53).