Pula Arena

Put your hand on the nearest arch. The stone is pale, almost white, and it holds the warmth of the day long after the sun has moved on. Underfoot, the ground is worn smooth by centuries of feet. Somewhere behind you, traffic hums along the harbour road. Above you, there is no roof at all, only a wide oval of open sky framed by arches. You are standing inside a Roman amphitheatre, and it still feels like a working building.

This is Pula Arena, the great oval of stone at the edge of the old town. The Romans knew this city as a colony on the Istrian coast, and they gave it what every proud Roman town wanted. That meant a forum, temples, city gates... and a place for spectacle. The arena went up in the first century after Christ. It began as a smaller structure and was later enlarged into the giant you see today.

That enlargement belongs to the age of the Flavian emperors, the same dynasty that built the Colosseum in Rome. So this arena and the Colosseum are close cousins in time. They were raised for the same purpose, with the same engineering ideas. Here is the first surprise. Pula's outer ring survives far more completely than the outer ring of its famous relative in Rome. From the outside, you see an almost unbroken wall of arches.

Look carefully at that outer wall, and you will notice something odd. It is not the same height all the way around. The arena sits on a slope that falls toward the sea. On the seaward side, the wall rises in three levels of arches. On the uphill side, it has only two. The Roman builders did not flatten the hill. They worked with it, and the slope helped them support the seating inside.

The stone itself is local limestone from the Istrian peninsula. It is the same pale, hard stone you see in many buildings along this coast. It cuts cleanly and weathers to a soft cream colour. Up close, you can see tool marks, joints between blocks, and patches of repair from different centuries. Some blocks are sharp. Others are rounded by wind and salt air from the harbour just below.

Now find the four towers set into the outer wall. They stand out from the curve like the corners of a frame. This is the second surprise. Pula Arena is often described as the only surviving Roman amphitheatre with all four of these side towers preserved. Inside them were staircases, and they also held water tanks. Ancient writers describe arenas cooling crowds with sprinkled water, sometimes scented, during hot afternoons.

Inside, imagine the oval packed with people. The arena could hold roughly twenty thousand spectators, a huge crowd for a provincial town. Stone seats once rose in tiers around the open floor. Most of that seating is gone today. Over the centuries, people took the cut stone away to build houses, churches and walls. Stone in a ready-cut form was too useful to leave alone, so much of it now sits in other buildings across the region.

And what did those crowds come to see? Gladiators, above all. Trained fighters faced each other on the sand, and contests with animals also filled the programme. Below the arena floor, passages and rooms helped stage these events. Fighters, animals and equipment waited out of sight. Today, you can walk down into these underground spaces, and the air feels cooler and quieter there.

Those underground rooms now hold an exhibition about olive oil and wine in ancient Istria. You will find amphorae there, the tall clay jars with pointed bases that Romans used to store and ship liquids. Olive oil was central to the economy of this coast. It lit lamps, cooked food and cleaned skin. So the space that once hid gladiators now tells a quieter story about farms, presses and trade.

The arena almost left Pula altogether. In the sixteenth century, when this coast was ruled by Venice, there was a plan to take it apart. The idea was to rebuild it, stone by stone, in Venice itself. A Venetian senator named Gabriele Emo opposed the plan, and the arena stayed. Look for a stone plaque on one of the towers. It honours him for keeping the monument in place.

There is also an older, more magical explanation for the missing roof. Legend has it that fairies built the arena in a single night. They carried the stones from Učka, the mountain you can see inland on clear days. But dawn came before they finished. The fairies fled the daylight, and the arena was left open to the sky forever. Locals still tell the story with a smile.

The arena never really stopped being a stage. Since the mid-twentieth century, it has hosted the Pula Film Festival, with films projected under the summer stars. Concerts, opera evenings and sports events also use the space. On those nights, thousands of people sit where Roman crowds once sat. The acoustics are good, and the stone walls hold the sound inside the oval.

Before you leave, walk the full circle around the outside. Watch how the arches change as the ground drops toward the water. Notice the cranes and ships of the harbour beyond, and the apartment blocks pressed close on the other side. A Roman monument and a living city sit here side by side. As you walk away, look back once more. The arches will turn gold, then grey, as the light changes over the sea.