The volume presented at the Trieste Press Club involves two researchers and university professors, the archaeologist Rita Auriemma and the geologist Stefano Furlani as well as the journalist Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin.

It is fascinating to think of that Istria that we have lost, forever sunk in the sea or hidden from the eyes of visitors, the Istria that Rita Auriemma, Stefano Furlani and Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin tell us about in the pages of the book, published by the Istrian-Venetian cultural club “Istria”, with a preface by president Livio Dorigo, a publication presented at the Trieste Press Club, with an introduction by Luciano Santin.

Breaking the Boundaries of the Past

“The Istria Club was born forty years ago with the great project of recomposing a scattered population through an action carried out both in Italy and in Istria, Quarnero and Dalmatia”. Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin described the mission, the existential task of the “Istria” Club. “Two great project fields, the land and the sea, called Castellieri and Approdi respectively. The book 'Istria seen from the sea' combines these two fields through the two scientific works of Auriemma and Furlani and my proposal for reading the landings reached by sailing boat – recalled Turcinovich –. Today hydrofoils have returned to connect Trieste to Istria, once the sea was the only connection due to the lack of roads. The book and the activity of the Club – she added – want to be a contribution to draw attention to the need to overcome the sixty years in which history has kept blocked the borders that the sea had overcome. In fact, ports have always been a destination for trade and cultural and civil exchange. The 107 kilometers of the Parenzana railway, built in 1902 far from inhabited centers, demonstrate indisputably that it was made for the countryside, for its trade. It ends in Parenzo because it was impossible to cross the Leme channel, in some way closing the territory to the south to one of its peculiarities: linguistic (Istriot) and in the presence of typical products and livestock, linked to Roman history and to contacts by sea with Puglia, still an important legacy today”.

Roman period finds 

Istria in the fourth and fifth millennium BC is below sea level. “Attilio Degrassi investigated at the beginning of the last century with still embryonic means, but with strong tenacity and determination – recalled Auriemma – discovering important remains with a high degree of conservation. My fortune of being able to work today with important international projects, in an archaeological research along the Istrian coast, has allowed us to understand the ways and phases of the population of these lands. From the Roman era there remain coastal complexes, villas and residences, ports with a port hierarchy that depended on Aquileia, at that time a major hub for goods towards the heart of Europe, with the ports of Parenzo, Pola and others serving the territory. In Salvore a pier 140 meters long and 11 meters wide was found underwater, from which Istrian oil and wine set sail to reach the Adriatic regions and beyond. Splendid villas and residences – concluded Auriemma – at the service of production, of the intensive exploitation of the agricultural hinterland, of the very rich waters facing it, teeming with fish, with industrial-level fish farms and buildings for the transformation of products, such as garum. Today it is a question of making these underwater discoveries of tourist relevance, since it is also a highly profitable type of tourism”. For Stefano Furlani instead it was a question of seeing Istria by swimming around the peninsula, of discovering the coast and the composition of its rocks. “From Fiume to Trieste the rock is always white limestone, except for the stretch from Portorose to Miramare, composed of Flysh, sedimentary rock. The sea level is always changing. Before the Roman era the Gulf of Trieste was devoid of water. While mathematical models say that by 2100 it could be one meter higher. Of this coastal evolution – recalled Furlani – we want to leave a precise photograph of today for those who will study it in the future”.

 

by Rossana Poletti – 07/05/2021

Source: The Voice of the People