The bus ride from Trieste to Rijeka takes less than two hours, through the forest and a few villages in Slovenia, into Croatia and back down to the Adriatic. It was a cold and windy day in Rijeka, the streets were ripped up, and the communist era architecture wasn’t appealing, so after lunch I caught a bus to Zadar. It was a wild ride, the wind howling, the road narrow and twisty with a shear drop down to the raging sea.

Zadar has a wonderful walled old town on a peninsula, full of Roman ruins and medieval churches. It played a part in my favorite crusade, the fourth. The crusaders contracted with the Venetians to build a fleet of ships and take them to the Holy Land so they could drive the infidels from Jerusalem and reclaim it for Christianity. However the crusaders weren’t able to come up with all of the money to pay for the ships, so the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, proposed a deal: if the crusaders would join the Venetians in attacking the (christian) city of Zadar, with whom the Venetians were having problems, the remainder owed on the ships would be forgiven. The crusaders agreed. So Dandolo, who was in his nineties and blind, personally led the crusaders in the sack Zadar. The Pope excommunicated everyone involved. Then he changed his mind and only excommunicated the Venetians. And this is only the beginning of the story of the fourth crusade.

Foro Romano and St. Donatus

Molo and Islands

Roman Ruins in the Foundation of St. Donatus

Roman Column with Winged Lion