Description

Bale, or Valle in Italian, is a small medieval town of stone 30 km north of Pula, home to just over 1,300 people. Its old town, built within the walls of a fort and protected as a whole, is a maze of squat stone houses, paved alleys and benches in the shade of vines above the doorways.

Venice granted Bale the status of a town in 1332, and its statute was confirmed in 1477. The largest building in town is the Soardo-Bembo Castle, a Gothic-Renaissance palace built at the start of the 16th century between two towers of the town walls. During its restoration, finds from a Bronze Age settlement came to light in the cellars. Today it hosts the Italian community and a display of Venetian costumes.

The legendary Casanova walked these streets too. He visited Bale twice, in 1743 and 1744, to see a young lady from the Soardo family. In front of the Town Hall stands a 14th-century loggia, and the crypt beneath the parish church keeps a lapidary and the stone sarcophagus of Blessed Julian, the town’s patron saint.

A modern landmark stands beside the old one: the Bale sports hall won first prize for sports buildings at the first World Festival of Architecture in Barcelona in 2008, beating Wembley Arena and the Beijing Olympic pool. Its facade reinterprets the local dry-stone walls.

Bale is also famous for its dinosaurs. In 1992, bones of dinosaurs that lived some 130 million years ago were raised from the seabed of Colona Bay, Europe’s only underwater palaeontological site of its kind. Research showed that at least ten species once roamed here, including the giant Brachiosaurus. The bones are on display in the Dinosaur Museum at the Ulika multimedia centre, while the Paleo Park at Mon Perin brings them back to life with life-size models, including a 20-metre Histriosaurus.

A butterfly appears on the town’s coat of arms, and for good reason: 390 species live in the area, many of them protected. Below town, nine kilometres of pristine coastline remain free of big hotels, with clear sea, Roman remains, an Austro-Hungarian fortress and views of the Brijuni Islands at sunset.