Page 7 - Stari Grad in miniature

Stari grad

in miniature

Small town, Stari Grad, whose name denotes its ancient roots (Old Town), lies
tucked away at the far end of a deep bay and on the edge of a large and fertile
plain. It was founded by Greek colonists from the Aegean island of Paros in
384 BC and they gave it the name Paros (Hvar in Croatian), born today by the
whole island. The fields stretching behind the town still bear visible markings of
the parcellation done when the colonists began farming the plain. This cultured
landscape, shaped by thousands of years of labour in the vineyards and olive
groves, is a singular monument to the persistence of human endeavours.
A continuation of life in Stari Grad over the millennia (with understandable
periods of rises and falls) has left numerous traces in the tissue of the historic
town centre. Greek and Roman monuments, Old Christian mosaics, medieval
churches, houses dating from all periods of the new-age architecture, artefacts
in churches and in the Dominican monastery, attractive 19th century shore,
literature written in the about the town, all these make Stari Grad a cultural
phenomenon built up of many layers of cultured urban life on the Croatian
Adriatic coast.
The most notable mark was made on the town by its Renaissance inhabitant,
poet and builder Petar Hektorović (1487-1572). The home, Tvrdalj, that he built
for himself, with a fish pond and a pigeon house, lent the town its characteristic
architectural landmark. Clever thoughts and messages found in the inscriptions
on the walls of his home and in his literary work, Fishing and Fishermen’s
Conversation, from 1556, have to this day guided the spirits of the local people
to live in humility and modesty, and to respect the simple life of work on the
sea and on land. stari grad in miniature
Despite a dominant tourist industry, which is the livelihood of Stari Grad’s peo-
ple, the place has preserved the atmosphere of a melancholy little town, quite
rarely encountered today on the exalted coast of tourist-ridden Dalmatia.

Aldo Čavić
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