Читать книгу History of the Adriatic - Egidio Ivetic - Страница 11

The framework of beaches is the backbone of all seas. In terms of longitude, there are two Adriatic seas – western and eastern – and the perception of the sea has always been based on this dualism.⁹ The west coast coincides with Italy and is a long straight line that begins in Salento. The wooded Gargano area, a peninsula a thousand metres high that juts out 50 kilometres into the sea, the ‘elbow’ of Mount Conero near Ancona, and the mouths of the Po River are the irregularities that break up a coast that is mainly linear, uniform, low and sandy. In the northern lagoon area, it bends eastwards towards the Karst Plateau. Here, in the Gulf of Panzano between Monfalcone and Duino, the Timavo River flows from the rocky subsoil and is the northernmost extremity of the sea (latitude 45°47’), the point at which the coast abruptly turns to the south-east. There is a sudden break between the Friulan Plain and the wall of the Karst Plateau. One perceives this travelling on the motorway towards Trieste. The eastern Adriatic starts here and is a long cliff more than two-thirds karst. The landscape around Duino is similar to Dalmatia, Herzegovina and the Montenegrin riviera. It is an extremely jagged coast, divided into three main sections: the Istrian peninsula, the Dalmatian archipelago, and the Albanian coast. This latter area is different, made up of wide inlets and sandy beaches as far as the mouths of the Butrint River opposite Corfu. There are therefore rocky shores at Otranto and along the Gargano coast, sand along the Apennine coast and in the lagoons, then once again rocks on the opposite shore, and finally sand. This is the coastal structure in a clockwise direction. It is a combination of diversities, almost a logic of alternation, either side of the sea. This has conditioned different approaches to the sea, different ways of fishing and seafaring, evident since the mid-twentieth century at Trani, San Benedetto del Tronto, Vis (Lissa), Fano, Chioggia and Rovinj (Rovigno).

The people who live on the Adriatic divide the sea into three sections: upper, middle and lower Adriatic. The dividing lines run between Ancona and Zadar (Zara) (upper/middle), and Gargano and the Bay of Kotor (middle/lower). The criteria for these divisions are certainly geographical and historical, but they also lie in deeply rooted customs, such as the traditional familiarity in relations between the Veneto and Istrian regions, between the Romagna, Marche, Abruzzo and Dalmatian regions, and between the regions of Apulia and Albania. The features of the three sections alternate, and also complement each other in terms of coastal type of marine life. Romagna and the lagoon basins between the Po and Isonzo rivers, which were historically centred around Venice and are places in which the Po, Veneto and Friulan plains literally once lay in the sea, are offset with Istria and the Karst region, almost a central European wedge, as well as the Kvarner Gulf (Quarnero) and the 140-kilometre long Velebit mountain range, northern Dalmatia. Opposite linear Apennine middle Adriatic lies jagged Dalmatia. Opposite densely populated flat Apulia lie the scarcely populated Montenegrin and Albanian mountains.

Each of these regional segments is a set of subsets.¹⁰ In Apulia, there are two large peninsulas: Salento (5,300 km²) which faces the Adriatic at Otranto, and Gargano (2,000 km²), which defines the Manfredonia Gulf; in the middle are the wide Tavoliere Plain and Terra di Bari area. Gargano juts out into the Adriatic and is a plateau 1,000 metres high. On its northern side lie two lakes: Lesina and Varano. Here the low-lying swampy coast has favoured the establishment of salt-panning plants. At Manfredonia, Barletta, Trani, Bisceglie, Molfetta, Giovinazzo, Bari, Mola di Bari and Monopoli the coast is rocky. This has been one of the most densely urbanized areas of the Adriatic since Roman and medieval times. Further south lie the ports of Brindisi and Otranto. Apparently homogeneous, Apulia has always had an articulated social and identity reality. Nevertheless, Bari – one of the most dynamic cities in southern Italy – dominates. It is the only true counterpart for the ancient capital of Naples. Bari tends to increasingly centralize and regionalize not only Apulia but also areas of Basilicata, and it is the Italian port for Montenegro and Albania.

In the region of the ancient Picenum, which corresponds partially to present-day Molise, Abruzzo and part of Marche, there is a uniformity in the landscape overlooking the Adriatic. The Apennine mountain chain, of which Gran Sasso in Abruzzo is the highest peak, is a more inland area, and it has been a zone traditionally used for pastoralism. There then comes a hill area (more common in Marche) crossed by 20-odd smaller rivers that flow into the Adriatic. This area is characterized by cities which, although they are not far from the sea, are certainly distant from the maritime world. From south to north lie Lanciano, Chieti, Teramo, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo, Macerata, Recanati, Jesi and Urbino. These are all cities that represent the ideal classical Italian landscape: fertile soil, picturesque scenery, in which crops – cereals, vines and olives – prevail. But they are also fragile at a hydrogeological level. Finally, the coast: a long strip of sand with shallow seabeds, also crossed by many rivers. It was a sparsely inhabited area, almost deserted, until the late nineteenth century.

The western Adriatic has always been difficult, when not impossible to navigate. Ports lie on river mouths which were hollowed out with canals and protective dykes. Other southern cities, from south to north, are Termoli, Ortona, Pescara and Giulianova. This coast is characterized by trabocchi, typical buildings on stilts used for net fishing. Then Marche: San Benedetto del Tronto, Porto San Giorgio and Civitanova Marche are today important for fishing but were in the past seaports for Ascoli Piceno, Fermo and Macerata; they were more ports of call than sea cities. Ancona, north of Bari, is the first port of any importance through the centuries. Between Ancona, Senigallia, Fano and Pesaro, Marche has one of the most important maritime contexts in the western Adriatic. In the fertile hilly hinterland lie the extraordinary city of Urbino, the Montefeltro region and the Republic of San Marino. Molise, which has a coast only 24 kilometres long, tends to gravitate towards Apulia. Abruzzo also did so in the past (through transhumance, for example), while today it is more closely connected to Rome and Lazio. The polycentrism of Marche ends with Tuscany and Florence, and the many towns of the Umbria and Romagna regions. Despite the relative uniformity of the landscape near the sea, a centuries-old demarcation has separated the coast between the State of the Church (Marche) and the Kingdom of Naples (Abruzzo) along the Tronto River.

Romagna is an Adriatic region characterized like few other regions by marine tourism, by the seaside holiday industry. As long ago as the time of Emperor Augustus, Ravenna was the most important Adriatic port, which later declined as, together with Comacchio, both silted up. Rimini was for years a small port. Nevertheless Ravenna, and Ferrara, although envious of its characteristics and its eccentric position regarding Romagna, just like Forlì and Cesena, both inevitably agricultural cities closely linked to the Po Plain, have always looked to the Adriatic rather than gravitated towards it. Once again, the sandy beaches and the shallow seabed, which was mainly impassable for navigation, isolated rather than united Romagna from the sea. The Po River completes this picture, with its wide delta mouth bordering and dividing the Romagna and Ferrara coasts and the Venetian lagoon basins. Romagna is of course Adriatic in nature but is nevertheless connected to the Via Emilia axis, which forms one large urban sprawl, a single industrial zone, from Piacenza to Rimini. The crowded beaches in the summer, when the sea acts merely as a background, are the continuation of and the final limit to the Po megalopolis.

North of the Po River, the lagoon area that historically extends for 400 kilometres has always been a world unto itself, despite being integrated into the Venetian Plain, present-day Veneto and Friuli. Since the early Middle Ages, the Venetiae, the various lagoon basins, islands, inhabited areas and the people have acted as go-betweens, as mediators between the strictly maritime world of the Adriatic and the hinterland that is essentially distant and different from the sea. This is one of the most extraordinary areas of Europe, together with the Netherlands, considering the human intervention that has managed the riverbeds and prevented the silting up of the lagoon. The unique city of Venice was founded and expanded in this precarious, difficult environment where sea and plain merge and where European and Mediterranean geographies meet. Between 1204 and 1400, Venice founded one of the most seafaring states in the history of the Mediterranean and later, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, turned to the domination of the mainland, expanding as far as the Alps and beyond Lake Garda. The upper Adriatic corresponds to the Gulf of Venice. Lying between the lagoons and Istria, Venice has for over a thousand years formed a unique maritime system of which the eastern Adriatic was an extension. The history of the Adriatic is not conceivable without Venice. Between the thirteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries, the Adriatic was in fact the Gulf of Venice. Venice constantly laid claim to sovereignty of the waters in this sea. The end of the republic in 1797 led to a slow decline of the upper Adriatic regional world (the Venetian lagoons and Istria), which then became fragmented between local and national geographies. As regional capital of the Veneto region, Venice was always different from the Veneto hinterland. The Venezie, the Italian north-east, lacked a barycentre fully recognized by the peripheries and still today struggles to find its true regional identity. Venetian polycentrism (including Friuli) lacks a system logic that might have led to the actual regionalization of the pre-Alpine area. The mainstays in the Roman system were Patavium (Padua) and Aquileia. Venice and its dominion had not permitted a similar structure, and its political decline left a vacuum. Contemporary Venice also lacked a maritime and geopolitical spirit, and struggled to accept the role of frontier town it was assigned by Italy. The redefinition of the position created by the Serenissima Signoria was never completed. There was a tragic inability to relate to the sea and the Mediterranean after the fall of La Serenissima, the most serene republic, which had profound consequences for the very conception of the history of the Adriatic and its regions.

Trieste, the farthest strip of Italy, remained a place unto itself within the Adriatic area. A small medieval commune with a narrow karst territory, it was for more than five centuries (1382–1918) linked to the destiny of the Habsburgs as it was the port used for the distribution of the salt destined for the Austrian provinces. Trieste was declared a free port in 1719 and between 1880 and 1914 became one of the most important international emporiums in the Mediterranean. Trieste was a project strongly desired by Vienna for which the city was a maritime access, and it was still a cosmopolitan city in 1914. It was a symbol of Italian nationalism, too, and became part of Italy in 1918. However, Trieste never managed to become an actual capital city of the surrounding territory, either of Venezia Giulia in 1921–1945 or of Friuli-Venezia Giulia after 1970. It never really integrated with the neighbouring regions of Gorizia, Friuli, Carniola (Kranjska) and Istria, regardless of political events. Influenced by the Italy–Yugoslavia border, the city remained suspended even after the removal of the Italy–Slovenia border as a result of the Schengen European treaty, still seeking a concrete role rather than an identity between central Europe and the Mediterranean, between Italy and central Europe.

The Istrian peninsula, characteristic because of its triangular shape and its jagged coastline, is the first territorial unity when one continues along the eastern Adriatic coast. More than a geographic expression, it is a historic region that dates back to the Augustan Regio X Venetia et Histria, to the Byzantine Theme (sixth to eighth centuries), to the Margraviate of the Holy Roman Empire (1060) up to the present-day Croatian county of Istria that inherited this administrative tradition. The region is today divided between three states: Muggia (Milje) lies in Italy; Koper (Capodistria), Piran (Pirano), and Izola (Isola) lie in Slovenia (the Slovene coast); the rest of the region, with the main cities of Pula (Pola) and Rovinj (Rovigno), is part of Croatia, the county of Istria. The maritime world has always characterized this area, from Trieste to the Kvarner Gulf, which defines the eastern side of the peninsula and leads to the city of Rijeka. Istria was a border zone and periphery: the extreme limit of Roman Italy, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, the Habsburgs, coast of Austria, periphery of Italy and Yugoslavia. Only recently has there been a tendency to value its regional individuality in political terms with its rich multiculturalism and transnational heritage.

Historic Dalmatia, once Roman then Byzantine and Venetian, extended from the islands of Cres (Cherso) and Lošinj (Lussino) to the Bay of Kotor. It is an archipelago of islands that are amongst the most spectacular in the Mediterranean, running along the coast which is itself shaped by the Velebit and Dinaric mountains. Today, Dalmatia lies entirely within Croatia, except for the Bay of Kotor, and is divided into several sub-regions. The Kvarner Gulf and the islands of Krk (Veglia), Cres, Lošinj and Rab (Arbe), as well as the towns of Senj (Segna) and Novi Vindolski on the coast, make up the so-called Kvarner area and gravitate towards Rijeka, once an emporium city for Hungary of which it was a corpus separatum, almost a suburb of Budapest, from 1867 to 1918. Rijeka (Fiume) was an independent state between 1919 and 1924; it was then incorporated into Italy and later into the independent state of Croatia in 1943–1945; it then finally became part of socialist Yugoslavia, of which it was the largest port. From 1953, a sub-region was assigned to Rijeka: the mountainous hinterland area of Gorski Kotar and the Kvarner area.

Recent Croatian geography includes northern Dalmatia with Zadar (Zara), the island of Pag (Pago) and the Zadar archipelago and hinterland; central Dalmatia with Šibenik (Sebenico) and its archipelago and hinterland, Split (Spalato) with the large islands of Brač (Brazza), Hvar (Lesina) and Vis (Lissa), the coastal towns of Omiš (Almissa) and Makarska (Macarsca); finally southern Dalmatia, with the island of Korčula (Curzola), Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and the territory that was once the Republic of Ragusa (Konavle, Astarea, Ston, the Pelješac peninsula and the island of Mljet). The Dalmatian islands spread out over 400 kilometres; they include the large islands of Kvarner and those of central and southern Dalmatia. In the middle lies a scattering of small and medium-sized islands and rocky islets. As elsewhere in the Mediterranean, over the last 50 years, this world has been undergoing depopulation, tourism overload and a total transformation of what life on these islands means. The Dalmatian archipelago is a network of archipelagos, with sailing routes marked by kanali, corridors between inland seas such as the Murter opposite Šibenik or the small Novigrad Sea (Novegradi) below the Velebit mountains. There are four rivers that run into the sea along this coast: the Zrmanja River, behind Zadar; the picturesque Krka River, which flows into the bay of Šibenik; the Cetina River, which cuts across mainland Dalmatia; and the Neretva River (Narenta), which flows from Herzegovina and is the river of Mostar. Dalmatia was always polycentric and at the same time self-sufficient, if only because it is geographically well defined by mountains and the sea. Zadar or Zara was long the landmark city, to which in the last two centuries was added Split, which is today the second largest city in Croatia. The archipelago of the Dalmatian islands, a true Adriatic archipelago, should be examined separately, as a specific Mediterranean world, as a geographical and historic and anthropologic subject, because in the Mediterranean it is second only to the larger and more jagged archipelago in the Aegean Sea.

Bosnia and Herzegovina have a single maritime port – Neum – at the mouth of the Neretva River. This was a short-lived narrow Ottoman territory created in 1718 in the Passarowitz peace treaty by the Republic of Ragusa to avoid a direct border with the Republic of Venice. In 1945, the coastal strip was re-modernized in the new federal Yugoslavia, giving Bosnia and Herzegovina sea access. This is no small problem for Croatia, a member state of the European Union (EU), which finds itself territorially separated from the county of Dubrovnik, which is actually a territory of the former Republic of Ragusa. Just as Dalmatia is a typical Mediterranean region – the Mediterranean landscape stretches as far as the slopes of Mount Dinara, its natural border and the highest mountain in Croatia – so is Herzegovina, which is karst and barren, recalling the classical Mediterranean even though without the sea. Mostar is in many respects a Mediterranean city.

Along the coasts of Montenegro, the contrast between the towering mountains and the sea continues. The shore is still rocky in the lovely Bay of Kotor, which is made up of several connected inlets with Kotor (Cattaro) as its main city. The bay recalls the Nordic fjords or Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. It is a unique part of the Mediterranean. Towards the open sea, the coast is sandy from Budva (Budua). Bar (Antivari) and Ulcinj (Dulcigno) are the main Montenegrin ports, existing side by side with beach resorts. Montenegro was an independent state from 1878, and, after a period under Yugoslavia from 1918, it became independent again in 2007. It is probably the most distinctive arrangement of the eastern Adriatic: a league of clans and Dinaric mountain brotherhoods which formed in the fifteenth century and managed to retain autonomy under the Ottomans, formed a state and, in 1878, thanks to diplomatic treaties, obtained coastal access at Bar and Ulcinj, which were ports then inhabited by Albanians and Turks.

The Bojana River connects Shkodra and the lake of the same name, the largest in the western Adriatic, and the sea. Bojana also acts as a frontier between Montenegro (and once, therefore, Yugoslavia) and Albania. Albania has a 300 kilometre-long sea coast, most of which is sandy shallow shores, a series of inlets and mouths of a dozen rivers that cross the Albanian Plain where the main towns and cities are located, including Tirana. For centuries, watery land, swamps and small lagoons hindered development of the coast, which only in the latter part of the twentieth century took on greater importance in the redefinition of Albania, attracting a population that had previously inhabited the hills and mountains. There are two ports that have been important since Roman times: Durrës (Durazzo) and Vlorë (Valona). Between Vlorë, from the barren peninsula of Karaburn, and Saranda, the coast becomes rocky and uninhabited again. Historic Epirus is the last of the regions that line the Adriatic. It winds its way from the Gulf of Vlorë and the 100-kilometre Ceraunian mountain range to the Gulf of Arta on the Ionian Sea in Greece. Epirus is a mountainous region, and extends into the hinterland as far as the Pindus mountains that separate it from Macedonia. However, it is integrated in economic terms with the Ionian Islands. Albania, like Montenegro, is an Adriatic and a Balkan state, albeit with few maritime traditions.