Pula's layered architecture: from Byzantine chapel to Venetian fortress

This article explores the architectural palimpsest of Pula, Croatia, focusing on post-Roman structures that reveal centuries of imperial overlays. The surviving Byzantine-era Chapel of St. Mary Formosa, built under Eastern Roman patronage and later partially demolished by Venetians, now stands as a small cruciform volume with a central lantern. The Palazzo Comunale, Pula's town hall, exhibits a hybrid facade blending Baroque, Renaissance, and 13th-century Romanesque remnants, including a reused column from an earlier government building. The Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary, originally a 5th-century three-nave basilica, was rebuilt after a 13th-century fire and later given a late-Renaissance portal and a freestanding campanile under Venetian rule, its base incorporating stones from the Roman amphitheater. The Franciscan Monastery of St. Francis, built by architect Jacobus de Pola in the 14th century following the order's Narbonese norms, features a cloister with stone columns and a Gothic church with a gilded altarpiece. The 17th-century Venetian Fortress, a rationalist quadrilateral with arrowhead bastions, now offers panoramic views. Finally, the Zerostrasse tunnel system, built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I and expanded by Italy before World War II, served as a bomb shelter and is now a museum.