Istra Nova

Celebrities

For a long time Istria has been the path and destination of many people who left their mark on history.

It has been home to many world renowned persons, sometimes also a refuge for the tired as well as a tourist destination of certain historical figures. Mate Parlov, the boxer from Pula, was a two time European champion, the Olympic Champion, World Champion and the Professional European and World Champion.

Another celebrity, born in Motovun in 1940, is also Mario Andretti, the American race car driver of Italian origin, who became the Formula One World Champion in 1978.

Josip Broz Tito, who managed to ensure the annexation of Istria to Yugoslavia after World War II, liked to spend his vacations here. The archipelago of Brioni was the place he would reside at most often. There he entertained statesmen and other members of jet set, and he would regularly visit the Pula Film Festival.

The Italian writer Dante Alighieri mentions Pula in his “Divine Comedy”, so it is believed that he lived there for a while. The Irish writer James Joyce also resided in Pula for some time – after his arrival to Trieste he realised that a job he thought had been waiting for him at the Trieste Berlitz school was unavailable, so he headed on to Pula. Thus the world famous Irish writer spent a part of his life in Pula, where he taught English, mostly to the officers stationed in the Austro Hungarian naval base. The school was located right next to the famous Arch of the Sergi, and the apartment where James Joyce lived was also nearby.

In his novel Mathias Sandorf the writer Jules Verne described the event that took place in Pazin on 26 June 1867, which was also the reason why the inhabitants of Pazin have been celebrating the Jules Verne Day since 1998.

The famous lover from the island of Mljet, Giacomo Casanova, cherished wonderful memories of women and wine in Vrsar, while the Austrian entrepreneur Paul Kupelwieser invested in the Brioni islands in 1893 and built a retreat for high society and royal families. Robert Koch, the famous bacteriologist, succumbed to malaria at this very spot in the beginning of the 20th century.

Today Alberto Pucer, a man of many talents who writes down his historical, culinary and ethnographic research, simultaneously co creating the Istrian history, lives in Padna.

Padna is also the hometown of Franjo Frančič, a writer, poet and dramatist who spent a part of his youth in a juvenile correctional facility where he received training as a galvanizer. Later he studied at the Higher School for Social Workers in Ljubljana and also graduated from it successfully. Since the beginning of the 1980s he has lived as a self employed cultural worker in Padna.