The land called Istria is a region of Europe that lies across the bay from Venice at the head of the Adriatic Sea and gently tucked between the Gulf of Trieste and Bay of Kvarner. It consists of the largest peninsula in the Adriatic and a collection of islands caressing it, likewise the largest in the Adriatic.

Istria is an unique and enchanted place that has welcomed visitors and settlers from other parts of the world for as long as we have recorded history. Recent archeological excavations, however, reveal that it is an ancient land with traces of human existence during the Bronze Age and vital signs of life going even further back to the age of the dinosaurs.

When did modern civilization begin in this misty and mysterious land that is nestled at the foothills of the Julian Alps and cradled by the azure waters of the Adriatic Sea? In Šandalja (Sandalia), near Pula (Pola), osteological remains were discovered of a fossil man possibly dating back to the 12-20th century B.C.! Some writers claim that Pula, considered to be Istria's most ancient city, was founded by the Colchians, and others believe it was founded by Greek colonists who came from Istrus or Istropolis at the southern mouth of the Ister (now known as the Danube) River, who conferred on this territory the name of their native country, Istria. On the shores of the Black Sea are the archeological remains of a Histria/Istria, a Greek colony or polis (πολις, city) in what is now part of Romania. Around 30 A.D., it became a Roman town even before the Adriatic's Istria. An invasion of the Avars and the Slavs in the 7th century A.D. almost entirely destroyed the fortress, and its people dispersed. Perhaps it is only a coincidence, perhaps not, that in the Adriatic Sea Istria there are still people who speak an ancient Roman[ian] tongue and with their origins not recorded, yet are continuously being speculated...

What little is known for certain of Istria's early history is that the Histri, an Indo-European people who were kindred to the Veneti and Liburni, founded a colony here around the 11th century B.C. They were mentioned for the first time in the 6th century B.C. by Hecataeus of Miletus (560-490) in his Tour Round the World where he described them as "a people in the Ionic Bay" (i.e. the Adriatic). Claiming that they were pirates, the Romans initiated the first war with the Histri in 221 B.C. In 177 B.C., the Roman consul C.Clodius Pulcher subjugated them after a two-year seige. A Roman colony was then established in place of the Histri's around 45 B.C. and which became known as part of Venetia et Histriæ. The Roman rulers were then followed by the Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Avars, Langobards, Slavs, Franks, Venetians, Genoese, Romanians, Magyars and Austrians, and in the last century by Italians, Serbs and now Croats and Slovenes. Even Attila's Huns skirted around the peninsula and Napoleon Bonaparte's French monarchy briefly ruled Istria, their subjects thereby blending into the complex fabric of this uniquely historic and beautiful place. 

Perhaps it is ironic as well as symbolic that a large portion of Istria's soil is a rich red that evokes the color of the human blood that soaked into it through the millennia; another is a stark gray-white that is arid like the ashes of its scattered dead; while the balance is allegorically black like the souls of the many plunderers and conquerors who have stripped this land of its most precious resource, its mosaic of sturdy people. A land mass will take millions of years to evolve while a cultural heritage requires only centuries. Tragically, either or both can be instantaneously destroyed by a flash of lightning, an earthquake, the plagues, or repeated human invasions!

Indeed, some people came to Istria to plunder or rule, some to hide or flee from oppressors, and still others have come  simply to enjoy the pastoral settings. In his memoirs, the notorious Venetian Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725-1798) describes two visits that he made to Istria and how he made love in Vrsar (Orsera). In contrast, philosophers, saints, and hermits spawned in Istria a sanctuary from the mundane - even a false messiah! - while Roman poets and Renaissance troubadours praised Istria in their verses. One of them, Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 43-117 B.C.), was a Spaniard who later gained fame as a Roman poet, satirist, and master of the epigram. Better known as Martial (Italian: Marziale), he wrote: "Uncto Corduba laetior Venafro / Histra nec minus absolute testa." (English: Oh, city of Còrdoba, you who are more fertile than the city of Venafro famous for its oil, and as perfect as an Istrian amphora; Italiano: O città di Cordova, tu che sei più ricca della città di Venefro famosa per il suo olio, e non sie meno perfetta di un'anfora istriana; and Hrvatski: Kordobo, koja si plodnija od Vinafre poznatoj po ulju, a nisi ni manje savrsena od istrarske amfore".)

A Tuscan political figure and legendary poet named Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) had visited Istria and touched upon Pula (Pola), the symbolic capital of Istria, in his guided tour through allegorical Hell in his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy [introduction]. Almost six centuries later, Jules Verne (1828-1905), a Frenchman, led his own lyrical hero, Mathias Sandorf, through the caves and subterranean streams of Istria in a more realistic rendition of the underworld even though it is believed that he personally never set foot there. Then there was Istrian-born Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) who transcribed the famous Devil's Sonata that he had heard in a dream. Perhaps what he actually echoed was the haunting refrain of the legendary Adriatic winds (bora, sirocco, and others) that vibrated through the breathtaking peaks and valleys of his childhood homeland. Almost two centuries later, James Joyce (1882-1941), a tempestuous Irish writer and Nobel prize winner, is reported to have conceived the turbulent protagonist of his novel Ulysses during his four months' stay in Pula (Pola) in 1904-5 while he was there to teach English to Austro-Hungarian officers at the Berlitz School. From there, he transferred to Trieste, the second of the three seaport cities that form the "Istrian triangle". Sir Richard Burton (1821-90), a British adventurer, writer and diplomat, who spent many years and died in Trieste, had visited and wrote about Istria. And who can forget the fiery Fiorello La Guardia (1882-1947), the greatest Mayor that the City of New York has ever had - and, indeed, the most famous mayor in United States history - and affectionately known as the "little flower", himself had multiple personal and professional ties to Istria. In fact, his father, Achille LaGuardia (1849-1904), famous in his own right, is buried in Koper (Capodistria), Istria.