After the fall of Venice in 1797, Pula was part of Austro-Hunagrian Monarchy and for a short period of time was under Napoleon’s domination (1805-1814).

During the mid-19th century the Austrian Empire had to seek a more secure location for its main wartime harbour and naval arsenal than the one it had maintained in Venice.

The struggle of the Italian people for unification, supported by the European powers, totally endangered Austrian possessions in Italian territory.

At the time the Emperor’s commission chose Pula for its new military harbour. In 1856 a large naval arsenal was built in Pula for shipbuilding and repairs of the Austrian war fleet Uljanik.

In 1866 it was decided that Pula would be the main military naval base of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

It is interesting to mention that in 1871 Pula also got its planetarium that was built on Monte Zaro. At the time this planetarium was important for naval navigation studies.

It’s also interesting to remember that ten years after the foundation of the planetarium Pula received the biggest telescope in the World with a diameter of 3 meters.

In 1900 Pula had 42500 inhabitants. Later on, in a very short period of time, it reached 60000 inhabitants. The whole area around the old town as we see it today was built during that period.

New villas and residences were built for the highest ranking officers on Veruda. The expansion of the town ensured that Roman buildings like the Arena, once outside the town, found themselves in the very centre.

Pula at the time lived its second Renaissance after the glory of the Roman Empire and was a small Cosmopolitan town like London or New York and other international cities today.

After the First World War and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Pula became part of Italy. Fascism made many errors against Istrians who did not have Italian as their mother tongue and in its only twenty year leadership over the Istrian territory thousands of innocent people paid for the errors of Fascist politics with their lives.

In 1947 many Italian speaking Istrians from Pula decided to leave the town. Again, as so many times in European history, innocent people paid for the errors of politicians.

In 1943 Germans occupied Pula and later on the Allied forces heavily bombed the town and destroyed almost 40% of the buildings.

In May 1945, towards the end of the Second World War, the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army entered into Pula. Soon after, according to Allied agreements, the town’s administration passed to Anglo-American forces.

In 1947 the Allied forces agreed that Pula would be part of Yugoslavia and after that decision, in only few months, most of the Istrians from Pula decided to leave the town.

Almost 80% of Istrians from Pula left the town and exiled. This was the second important exile after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There were three signed agreements between Yugoslavia and Italy in which was established that Istria would become part of Yugoslavia: Paris Agreement in 1947, London Memorandum in 1954 and Osimo Agreement in 1975.

In 1991 with the fall of Yugoslavia and the founding of the Republic of Croatia,  internal republic boundaries were recognised as State boundaries and so today Pula is part of Croatia. In 1991 Pula had its third exile and for the third time the history was repeated in 20th century.

In 2013 Pula became part of the European Union. You cannot change the past but you can try to learn from it.

The main aim of the European Union founders was to build a system that could avoid future wars and future refugees in Europe as I explain in COSMOPOLITE.

At the beginning of this text I wrote that the epic poets from Alexandria: Licofrone and Callimaco, named Pula as Polai, and according to the tradition Polai means “the town of the exiled people”.

Every regime change, during the last century in Pula (1918, 1947, 1991), forced many people that loved this town to choose exile.

Hopefully the success of the European Union of tomorrow will mean that this does not have to happen to the future generations of Pula and to other people that decide to live in Pula.

Future generations should try to understand and learn from these past experiences.