The town and arsenal of Pola lie at the head of one of those convenient inlets which provide the Austrian coast so plentifully with fine harbours. As the steamer passes between Cape Compare and Monte Grosso the naval port appears to the right with many powerful ships-of-war anchored in the bay: beyond and above the island of Olivi, occupied by part of the arsenal, rises the town, its buildings climbing the hill towards the castle which crowns the summit. To the left is the ample commercial port with its long quays stretching towards the railway station, the imposing mass of the amphitheatre dominating the whole of that side of the picture. These two structures, the amphitheatre and the arsenal, show the chief interests of Pola—the glory of antiquity, and modern utility devoted to defence; for the monuments of mediÆval times are few in the city, and the destruction wrought alternately by Venice and Genoa left it poor, and in many parts ruinous, till the modern revival, with the transference of the headquarters of the Austrian navy from Venice in 1861. The mouth of the harbour is less than half a mile across and is over 100 ft. deep. The eastern portion has a depth of 20 ft. against the quays, which are all constructed on made ground. The quarries on the Brioni Islands have afforded excellent material close at hand for the buildings and fortifications both in antiquity and in modern times.

The castle hill was the capitol of the Roman city, and the streets ran round it, with others diverging like the ladders of a spider's web. A canal isolating the city from the land existed to the east. Of the land gates two still remain—the Porta Gemina (anciently the Porta Jovia) and the Porta Ercole; the arch of the Sergii formed the interior face of a third (of which a portion of the lower courses remain), the Porta Aurea, so called probably from its having had grilles of gilded bronze. There were also seven gates in the walls towards the sea. The forum was twice the size of the present piazza, which occupies part of its site, and had twin temples at one end, with the comitium between them, of which one remains in good preservation, and a portion of the back part of the other. There was a temple of Jupiter Conservatorius, upon the site of which the cathedral stands; and one to Minerva, afterwards the site of the destroyed basilica of S. Maria in Canneto. The theatre was near the Porta Aurea, and is now marked only by the excavation of its curve in the hillside and a few ruined arches in a private garden. The destruction of ancient Pola is largely due to Venice, who appeared to think that when the communes gave themselves to her she acquired the right of removing any of the monuments to beautify herself; and it even went so far as for a patrician to seriously propose to bear the cost of transporting the amphitheatre to Venice, and re-erecting it on the site of the present public gardens!

The Porta Gemina consists of twin arches, beneath a simple frieze and more elaborate cornice supported by modillions, which rest upon three engaged composite columns raised upon pedestal blocks. The key-stones are flat, and the piercing of some holes in them suggests that metal enrichments were affixed. It was an important gate, being the direct way to the amphitheatre from the Capitol, and also the starting-point of the military road towards the Arsa and Albona. By it also the aqueduct passed into the city. The Porta Ercole is simpler, and probably older; it bears the names of two duumvirs, Lucius Cassius Longinus and Lucius Calphurnius Piso, and some rough carving. Of the Porta Aurea itself, which had a central gate for chariots and two side gates for pedestrians, little remains. Beneath the arch of the Sergii the ancient pavement has been uncovered, bearing wheelmarks made many centuries ago, and the lower courses of the gateway adjacent, but all the part above the present street-level has disappeared. The carving on the arch of the Sergii shows a curious economy. Since the gate was so close to it only a portion of the coupled Corinthian columns could be seen; the fluting, therefore, was carried only a third of the way round, and the capitals were left merely roughed out, as were also the mouldings of the attic which would be hidden by the cornice, except in the portions visible from the external sides. The soffit of the arch is carved, and the face of the pilaster below has a very rich and graceful vine arabesque upon it. The other side is fully decorated with victories in the spandrils, festoons and chariot-races on the frieze, and the attic develops three pedestals for statues, inscribed to members of the family of Salvia Postumia, who erected it in honour of her husband, Lucius Sergius, his father of the same name, and his uncle CnÆus Sergius. Lucius Sergius was tribune of the 29th Legion. The work is probably of the time of Augustus.

The finely proportioned temple was erected at a later period during his lifetime by the grateful Polese; such adulation could be tolerated only in Asia, and Augustus declined to allow the dedication without the addition of "Rome." The faÇade has four Corinthian columns, and at the angles of the cella are four channelled pilasters; between these and the four columns of the faÇade is a similar column on each side. The roof is modern. Within it and around are collected numerous sculptured fragments, antique and of the early mediÆval period for the most part, which would be the better for spacing and arranging. The other temple is of a later date. They both stood upon a platform twelve steps above the forum, themselves raised further by seven steps and a stylobate. The rostra were on the forum side of the comitium.

Till 1875 the amphitheatre—which was built in 198-211 in honour of Septimius Severus (who had been governor of Illyria) and of Caracalla—lay open to the street. It was then railed round, and since that time systematic excavations have disclosed the plan of the sub-structures. The circuit, which is nearly perfect, consists of seventy-two arches, and the elevation has a basement and a principal story, with an attic of square windows to light the promenade, and a finishing cornice through which the masts for the Velarium passed, resting upon stone blocks above the cornice of the main story. The arches at the extremities of the long diameter are wider than the rest, and therefore cut into the frieze above, an unusual licence. There are four towers, two towards the sea and two towards the hill, which probably contained double staircases, but no sign of them remains, though the doorways and grilles of pierced stone testify to their usefulness. Excavations have brought to light forty or fifty pieces of the steps of the auditorium, upon some of which the seats are marked by dividing lines and by letters. The podium of the arena shows by its lowness that fights with wild beasts did not take place in it. Until the fourteenth century the interior remained nearly complete, the patriarch having forbidden the removal of stones. At that time the seats were taken to repair the town walls, and a great deal of the material was subsequently sold to Venice. The stone of which the amphitheatre is built has taken on a beautiful warm colour from the suns of centuries, and glows in the sunset light as if it were the marble which makes so many Italian buildings lovely in colour.

The most important church in Pola was S. Maria Formosa, or del Canneto (of the marsh), built on the foundations of the temple of Minerva. It was founded by Maximian, archbishop of Ravenna, the friend of Justinian, who was born at Vistro, now Porto Vestre, a village to the south of Rovigno. He came to Pola to consecrate it in 546. He also founded a Benedictine monastery near, which soon became the richest in Istria by its connection with Ravenna, endowed the convent of S. Andrea, and built a house for the rector of the basilica. The site of the abbey is now occupied by the buildings of the Hotel Central and other houses in the parallel streets Via Minerva and Via Abbazia. It was a basilican church with nave, and aisles raised two steps above it. There were ten columns on each side, with varied capitals. The aisles were vaulted, and the semi-dome of the apse was decorated with mosaics on a gold ground. The high-altar was under a baldacchino; there was a throne for the abbot, and seats in the choir for the monks. The windows were small and round-headed, filled with pierced slabs. The ancient door of entrance is between Nos. 27 and 33, Via Abbazia—a round arch simply moulded, with a dentil round the tympanum and a lintel below. The nave stretched along the space now occupied by the stable-yard of the hotel, and the wall of the north aisle forms part of the stables. It has external pilaster strips opposite to the places where the columns of the nave arcade stood. The apse, with triumphal arch, still exists, and two round chapels which flanked it and were entered from the aisles; one of them was dedicated to the Madonna del Carmelo, and the other to S. Andrew.

The S. Maria del Canneto of to-day is a cruciform chapel which lay to the right, and has an apsidal eastern end. The entrance is past the kitchen of the hotel; and from a window of an upstairs corridor one can "assist" at Mass when it is performed, for the church is entirely enclosed in the hotel buildings. The arms of the cross have wagon vaults; at the crossing is a quadripartite vault with ribs and central oculus on a higher level; rough projections along the ribs suggest the copying of leaf ribs of early mosaics. It is about 22 ft. 6 in. high, and there is a window in each wall. The roof shows ancient material and in some parts the ancient manner of using tiles. On the face of the bell-turret a piece of eighth-century carving is fixed. The walls are now whitewashed, and the floor covered with red tiles. The round chapel to the left of the apse has a cupola with an oculus and a lantern at the top. There are still remains of the mosaic pavement of the apse in No. 20, Via Minerva: in 1898, when building the stables, some fragments were found near to the aisle wall, which, with others unearthed in 1902, are now in the municipal museum. The patterns are a guilloche border with fishes, enclosing a field of plant sprigs, and a lotus border with a more conventional pattern within. The colours used are two reds, two greens, black and white, and pale blue occasionally. The cloister lay between the church and Via Abbazia; the houses 39, 37, and 35, stand on its site. The last notices of the church occur in the middle of the thirteenth century; later mention refers only to the ruins. The destruction appears to have taken place when Pola was sacked by the Venetians under Giacomo Tiepolo and Leonardo Querini in 1243, though some think that it was in one of the later sackings by the Genoese, of which there were three in the fourteenth century—1354, 1376, and 1380. In 1600 a number of the pillars were still upright, and mosaics and sculptures were visible; at that time they tried to raise a chapel within its walls. It is certain that the Venetians gradually despoiled it of everything of value, with the consent of the Polese. Much of the material was used in the seventeenth century for the restoration and rebuilding of the communal palace, and two at least of the pillars of the ciborium of S. Mark's, Venice, as well as the four of Oriental alabaster, which the tourist is told came from the Temple of Solomon, were spoils from this splendid church, the latter annexed in 1605, and the former by Giacomo Tiepolo in 1243.

In 1545 Sansovino was sent by the Senate to bring away the marble columns to Venice. The African marble on the landings of the Libreria Vecchia also came from Pola, and the shaft of the holy-water basin in S. Mark's, with dolphins and tridents, once belonged to a temple of Neptune there. The Polese presented the four central columns to S. Maria della Salute, from the theatre on Monte Zaro. In 1632 the Venetian Senate ordered the provveditore of the castle, Pola, to inform himself as to the number and quantity of the columns of "noble architecture" which were in one of the ruinous churches, and on August 21, 1638, praised the diligence of Bragadin in sending marbles for S. Maria della Salute. He had sent fourteen columns in April, and information of others at Parenzo.

Several other early churches in and around Pola were destroyed while constructing the fortifications. On the island of S. Caterina was a cemetery church, the plan of which indicated early Byzantine origin; on that of S. Andrea were a cloister and church of the sixth century; and on the hill whence the Tegethoff monument now looks over the harbour the double basilica of S. Michele in Monte, partly dating from the seventh century and partly from the eleventh. The grave of Salomon, king of Hungary, who died here in 1087 and was canonised shortly after, whose body had been venerated in the cathedral from the fifteenth century, was then found. The sarcophagus is now in the museum.

The original cathedral appears to have been contemporary with that of Parenzo, but it was restored in the ninth century. In 1884 the floor of the presbytery was lowered, and near the high-altar, at a depth of two feet, Roman fragments and ninth-century carvings were found, with an inscription of the fifteenth century; lower still were Roman inscriptions and sculptures, and then a semicircular mosaic floor of 13 ft. radius, with a lily border on a black and red ground (grey, yellow, and white tessera? also being used), with an inscription mentioning Donatian, and small medallions with cross and square. Under the first step of the demolished stairs was a second much damaged mosaic resembling the early one at Parenzo. It may be seen by lifting a trap-door, A bronze medal of Agrippina was found at the same time. Three rectangular windows were also discovered, a large one in the centre and two smaller towards the sides, the former filled with a pierced slab now preserved in the presbytery. The triumphal arch is round, with early caps and impost mouldings; other early caps and columns are visible in the walls of the choir in hollows made to expose them. The theory is that there was a confessional behind the apse instead of below it, of which these fragments are the remains. Encrusted in the outer wall of the south aisle is an inscription which runs thus: "In the year 857, fifth indiction, under Ludovicus, Emperor of Italy, Handegis was elected and consecrated bishop on Whit Sunday, and occupied the seat for five years." It is thought that he was the restorer of the building. Some of the ninth-century carvings are in the museum. Several small windows high in the nave walls still retain the slabs pierced with ninth-century patterns, and two unbroken ciborium or baptistery archivolts still exist, one in the courtyard of the Beata Vergine della Miscricordia, and the other in the Piazza S. Giovanni, where it is made up into a little shrine with two fourteenth-century caps, and a Renaissance pediment with two uprights of a chancel of Lombard work, with three furrowed scrolls and crosses of the usual Syrian derivation.

The church was subsequently much altered, the transepts and apse have vanished, and stones found which bear the marks of fire suggest that it was burnt, either by the Venetians in 1243 or by the Genoese in 1379, when they took the bronze doors away and burnt the archives. An inscription on the front of the reliquary tomb, which is to the right of the high-altar, and claims to contain the bodies of SS. Basil, Demetrius, George, and Theodore, and of Salomon, king of Hungary, states that Bishop Biagio Molin rebuilt the church in 1417. To this building the retable of the high-altar, dedicated in 1469 and now in the north aisle, belongs, still called La Madonna del Coro. It has figures of saints in the upper row, half length, and full length in the lower row, in high relief; the Madonna in the centre, and above her Christ over His tomb, showing His wounds, and attended by the Virgin and S. John, with fine tabernacle work and pierced pinnacles, all gilded except the flesh, which is painted, and the ground behind the pinnacles, which is blue. It is rather over-restored and looks quite new. The ciborium has cipollino columns, antique caps, pointed arches, and Venetian dentil enrichments with marble inlays. The nave arcade, of nine columns, has slightly pointed arches, unmoulded except for a simple hood-mould and a kind of engrailed crown above the abacus. The caps are for the most part late fourteenth century in character, but some are antique. The columns have been made up to the same size with plaster, and painted to imitate granite, only a few having escaped. The last one on the south has a ring round the centre; one base looks antique, many of them have spurs. The restorations of 1640 and 1712 have obliterated all appearance of antiquity. Bishop Giuseppe Maria Bottari, the last restorer, used so many inscribed slabs in repairing the interior and building the campanile that he was nicknamed "the sexton of inscriptions." There was a cruciform baptistery to the west, the remains of which were destroyed in 1850 in connection with the harbour works. To the north of the cathedral is the communal cistern, which covers a great part of the site of the early church of S. Thomas. In 1860 some reliquaries were found here between the cistern and the cathedral sacristy, where the centre of the apse probably was, and further investigations disclosed the steps to the presbytery, remains of the apse, and stones carved with ornament. In 1332 this church was used for service in place of the ruined cathedral, and as late as 1812 some remains of the walls were visible. The reliquaries were contained in a stone chest some three feet below the ground level. Within it was another smaller chest of Greek marble, with Byzantine ornament, and a gable roof with an inlaid cross of green stone. This was preserved in the cathedral for some time, but has now disappeared. Within it the workmen found a flat rectangular casket, described as being divided into sixteen compartments, which held silver reliquaries, and in the middle a small golden box, in which were two little finger-bones. In another was a small yellow piece of silk with blood-spots on it. The sacristan asserted that there were also twelve golden statuettes a span high, and some smaller silver vases; but all the reliquaries have disappeared except two, which have been preserved at Vienna since 1888. The more important of the two is an hexagonal box with an ogee-shaped lid and a little rosette on the apex; on the sides are repoussÉ figures, the upper parts of which are repeated with some modifications on the lid. These figures are: Christ, between SS. Peter and Paul, and three single figures, two of which hold symbols, a roll, and a tau-cross. The Christ is youthful, without a nimbus, and holds an open book in the left hand. The draperies are all antique in style, and the work is believed to be of the first or second century. A hasp is attached to the lid, but there is no sign of hinge or corresponding button. The smaller casket is rectangular, resembling that found at Grado. On the lid is a cross in dark-blue enamel with surroundings of filigree.

The church of S. Francesco is halfway up the hill to the castle, and is now used as a military magazine. Towards the road the wall terminates in a gable, with two pointed openings for bells; below is a red cross inlaid within an enclosing moulding. A ramping cornice of shallow arches with dentils above it finishes the wall, the centre portion of which is pierced with a two-light trefoiled window blocked up below, while a chapel to the north is lighted by simple-pointed windows. The fine entrance door, with its rich mouldings, twisted columns, and round arch, looks rather older than 1314, which is the date of the first certain mention of the church; but in Istria and Dalmatia styles lingered late. It is said to have been built by the Castropola in 1285, and a half-obliterated inscription by the door records the date of 1406, when a provincial Franciscan council was held in the church. On each side of the door is a window of two trefoiled lights with slender shafts, and above it a rose with Gothic tracery. The interior has a simple unvaulted nave, a choir of one bay with cross vaulting, and a small chapel, probably the sepulchral chapel of the Castropola, since their arms are on the windows. The only remaining piece of the cloister serves as entrance portico. The little garden outside the principal door has a bowling-alley beneath a vine pergola, from which there is a beautiful view over the bay; and in it grow trees of euonymus and oleander with thick trunks, and an aloe, besides the usual roses, peaches, and mulberries.

The communal palace was built in 1296; the back portion is part of the second temple. Some portions of the ancient building remain on the right flank. It was the palace of the Margrave of Istria, and later of the Venetian rectors or counts of Pola. According to Kandler, the figure of a knight upon it represents Albert II., Count of Istria. The Genoese damaged the palace in 1390, but it was restored the next year. After the faÇade fell in 1651, it was rebuilt in its present form, with material from S. Maria Formosa, but it was not finished till 1703. During the last years of the Republic the count lived in the back portion, had his stables in the temple of Augustus and his kitchen in the other temple.

The castle was built on the ruins of the Capitol, probably about 1200. Within was the habitation of the count, a three-naved chapel, arsenal, lodging for two hundred soldiers, &c. The Sergii seized it in 1271 and became known as CastropolÆ. Here the captains of the people lived, who ruled Pola for the sixty-three years before 1328. The count was a civil governor, and after 1331, when the Polese gave themselves to Venice, had authority in the lower city; but a provveditore was appointed for the castle, who had a captain, a sergeant, two lieutenants, and eighty soldiers under his command. In 1638 the two offices were united. The new castle was commenced after the plague of 1632 from the designs of the Frenchman Deville, who used the material of the theatre. Kandler says that he remembered this castle, which had double walls with four towers to each, and one larger tower towards Monte Maggiore. The present castle is quite modern, and one is warned off when approaching it. The mediÆval walls were demolished in 1848. They appear to have been generally in a bad state of repair, and records of their restoration are frequent. The sea-walls were thrown down by the Venetians, who did not like the cities under their sway to have defences on the water-side, though they were sometimes obliged to permit something of the sort. For instance, in 1351, the Polese were allowed to build a wall 10 ft. high towards the sea, which was a sufficient defence against a sudden raid, but of little use in the case of a strong attack. As a matter of fact, the Genoese broke it down in 1380, sacked the city, and put all opponents to the sword.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century Pola was surrounded by a number of carefully built polygonal towers. There were eight gates with machicolated defences above them, and the arms of fifteen rectors in different places showed that the walls had been long in building. In 1610 the Uscocs sacked the city, entering through certain holes in the walls, which, as Fra Paolo Sarpi relates, rendered the closing of the great gates useless. The neglect of the Venetians in the matters of pay and provision of war material in the seventeenth century reduced the defences to a farce.

The laws of many of the cities prescribed penalties for crossing the wall. Pola, 1442: "No person shall dare to pass over the walls of the city of Pola in any manner, neither going nor returning, neither with nor without a ladder, and neither shall they enter nor leave the gates of the city, neither below nor above, under penalty of 50 lire di piccoli and three months in prison." The inhabitants of walled places had little liberty. Besides the duty of guarding the gates, a citizen could neither enter nor leave except between certain fixed hours; if he reached the opposite side of the ditch after the evening bell he found the drawbridge raised, and had to seek a bed outside, or climb the wall, in which case he ran the risk of being surprised and punished.

The communal museum contains many very interesting things belonging to different periods of Polese history. Here are some very ancient stones with Mycenean whorls cut upon Istrian material, perhaps by some prisoner taken by Istrian pirates; also stones with these whorls half obliterated, and hollows sunk here and there, which, it is thought, were a kind of star map made by shepherds when Istria was wooded, to direct them in driving their flocks. Here are two inscriptions mentioning an entirely unknown god and goddess, and the inscription of Gordian in which the name of Nesactium occurs, the discovery of which fixed the site of the most important of the Istrian cities, the scene of the massacre of the women and children by the hands of their husbands and fathers, to prevent them from being taken by the Romans.

Many things found there are also in the museum—skulls, an ivory spindle, fragments of pottery and glass, and two curious statues, very archaic in style, from a tomb-building. One is a nude rider upon a horse, the other an unclothed woman suckling a child, thought to be the indigenous god Melescos and one of the goddess mothers. There are also a prehistoric oven, bronze vases found in the well at Tivoli, near Pola, fragments from S. Maria in Canneto and other destroyed churches; and here also the chapter of the cathedral has deposited portions of the cathedral ciborium and other architectural fragments.

Pola was founded as a Roman colony in 129 B.C., at the same time as Trieste. It fought for Pompey, and was punished by destruction, but was restored in 33 B.C. as "Pietas Julia"; and in 27 B.C. Augustus raised the Istrian cities to the rank of municipia by adding the province to Italy. The Polese were inscribed in the tribe Valeria. Pola was also called Polentia in honour of the mother of Vespasian, and Herculanea in honour of Commodus. It had been the judicial capital under the Republic, and was prosperous under the Empire, being the place where two lines of traffic crossed, that from Rome through Ancona and so to the Danube, and that from Britain to Constantinople, and also had agricultural riches and manufactures of its own. It was the base of operations during the reconquest of Italy from the Goths, both for Belisarius and for Narses, and was made the principal city and harbour on the east coast of the Adriatic. It was also the granary of the Exarchate, owing to the Lombard destruction in Italy, and had a population of some 25,000. During the plague of 1348, which lasted for several months, a fifth of the population died, fifty patrician families became entirely extinct, and privileges were offered to foreigners to induce them to re-people the city. At the downfall of the Venetian Republic the population barely amounted to 600 souls.

The popular tradition of the destruction of the Castropola (who had made themselves lords of Pola) runs thus: Andrea di Tonata, the head of the popular faction, arranged a conspiracy to free the city. The moment chosen was the evening of Good Friday, during the annual procession called "of the wood of the Holy Cross," which went round the city, starting from the cathedral. Near the church of S. Stefano (which was within the walls at the foot of the castle hill) the conspirators, disguised in the dress of members of the Confraternity of S. Stephen, drawing their daggers at a given signal, threw themselves upon the Castropola, who were in a separate group in the procession, not thinking of danger, and killed them. Then, calling on the people to rise, the conspirators led them to the assault of the neighbouring castle, which they took by surprise, killing any of the family or their adherents whom they met. Only one child escaped, owing his life to the devotion of a servant who hid him when the crowd had actually entered the castle, and let him down by a cord into the Franciscan convent just below, from which a monk took him secretly out of the city to one of the country places belonging to the family. This tradition is not historical, for the family continued in Pola till the fall of the Signory, and flourished afterwards in Venice and Treviso; but there was certainly a rising then in which the houses of certain of their adherents were sacked. Two members of the aristocracy were appointed captains of the people, but after a month they decided to give themselves to Venice; by the Act of Dedition the Castropola were banished from Pola, Istria, Friuli, and Schiavonia, though they were allowed to retain their property. Their principal adherents were also banished. In 1334 an attempt to regain the Signory caused the Polese to ask the Senate to dismantle the castle, which was done, and the houses of the two heads of the family were also destroyed. So Pola became a mere appanage of Venice.