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The
Maritime Museum, Piran, Slovenia
By
Patrick Totty
One of the best things to happen during the
acrimonious breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s was that Slovenia,
the northwesternmost province, managed to emerge from all the subsequent
bloodletting relatively intact.
It was the first province to secede, declaring
independence in June 1991 and then enduring a 10-day siege by the
Yugoslavian federal army. After that, Yugoslavia left the Slovenes
alone.
Apparently Slovenia’s relative remoteness from the
center of things, combined with its astute and non-militant handling of
an increasingly distracted central government, earned it immunity from
full-tilt ethnic cleansing or vengeance bombings.
Also, Slovenia’s proximity to Italy and Hungary –
two countries that knew a lot about tourist infrastructure – and its
population’s own entrepreneurial instincts meant the new country was
in a good position to sell itself as a travel destination.
As such, Slovenia, with its modest coastline along the
Adriatic Sea just south of Trieste, is one of the Mediterranean’s last
undiscovered tourist gems. The jewel of that shoreline is Piran, a
walled town of 17,000 people that hugs the tip of a hilly, wooded
peninsula that juts into the sea.
With its medieval architecture dating back more than
800 years, its generally temperate climate, local casino and spots
venues, fertile hinterland of thriving wineries and olive orchards (the
local vinos of note are the white Bela
Malvazija
and the red Refosk), and a populace that hasn’t learned how to take visitors
for granted, Piran may be just the thing for travelers looking to
experience a walled town that hasn’t been inundated by 21st
century attitude.
That’s not to say that Piran lacks amenities –
there are a few decent hotels and restaurants (see our links below), and
Slovenia in general has a fairly high standard of living. But Piran,
which touts itself as being Slovenia’s most tourist-oriented town, is
still a bit retro about touristy things, so you may find yourself
missing being inundated by tshotchke emporia, price gouges and generic
Louis Vuitton/Hermes/Chanel/Cartier shops.
The point to Piran is that you can amble about a
medieval walled town that is still immersed in a workaday reality and
hasn’t yet become a city that has outlived all its reasons for
existing, except for tourism. That quotidian reality is what makes
Piran’s Sergej Masera Maritime Museum a must-see on your visit to the
city. Housed at the harbor’s edge in a pink-colored three-story
building, the museum commemorates a maritime tradition that extends from
the Middle Ages through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the mid and late
20th century and Slovenia’s eventual independence.
Piran’s location on the Adriatic as the port for a
productive agricultural region by itself would have made the town
important. But it’s also located near several salt pans that from the
Middle Ages on were significant sources of wealth. The Secovlje salt
pans provided a dependable source and stream of fungible wealth for the
region and its trans-Adriatic trading partners.
Unlike salt mines of old where miners, usually slaves
or prisoners, had to dig underground in stressful conditions, mining
salt pans was far more benign. It called for open-air labor that,
although tedious and repetitious, did not require the sheer amount of
toil to extract salt that pit mining did. For one thing, the sea itself
constantly replenishes the salt pans. There’s no need to dig further
and further into an excavation when the source of wealth you seek comes
lapping up against your ankles of its own accord.
Some useful URLs:
http://www.piran.com/