Discover Piran

The smaller harbour, the town’s inner port for fishing boats, was backfilled with sand in the 19th century. Thus, a spacious square was formed around which all major institutions are lined up. The square was named after the famous Piran man, the violin virtuoso and composer Giuseppe Tartini (1692 – 1770). The square with an elliptical shape was the final turnaround point for the electric tram that connected Piran and Portorož in the first half of the 20th century.

At the end of the 13th century, the Ventians built a town house in the Romanesque – Gothic style outside the then town walls. Its façade was full of built-in coats-of-arms and plaques. At the end of the 19th century, a new municipal palace was built. Here, the stone figure of a lion with an open book takes us back to the times of the Venetian Serenissima and old town houses. The palace houses the Domenico Tintoretto meeting room, which is decorated with the artist’s large canvas “Mary with Child and Piran Town Fathers”.

The centre in the municipal palace is an excellent starting point for getting to know Piran, Portorož and Istria. Here you can get informational and promotional materials or arrange guided tours of the town and the hinterland.

On location of today’s Town Gallery, there used to be an old town loggia connected to the town hall and St. Jacob’s Church. It was the gathering point of town lords and home to an office of auditors who guarded municipal property. The Town Gallery is an important exhibition space of modern art and a venue for high-profile events such as the Piran Days of Architecture.

The oldest preserved house in Tartini Square was built in Ventian Gothic style in the 15th century. There is a built-in stone slab with a standing lion and the inscription “Lassa pur dir” (Let them speak) between the windows of the second floor. Legend has it that the inscription is related to a love story. A well-off Venetian merchant is said to have built a house for a beautiful young woman from Piran. The inscription supposedly reminded the gossiping citizens how little he cared about their rumors. Today, there is a shop selling top-quality Slovenian sparkling wines and crystals on the first floor of the house, while the second and the third floor boast prestigious accommodation. One apartment is named after the Venetian merchant Del Bello, the other one is Margaret, named after the beautiful Piran woman.

Giuseppe Tartini, born in 1692 in Piran, was one of the greatest violinists of his time, a respected composer and an original music theorist. Upon the 200th anniversary of his birth, the townspeople wanted to erect a monument in his honour, but the work was protracted and the larger-than-life bronze statue of the master was mounted on the high pedestal in 1896. The monument is the work of the Venetian sculptor Antonio Dal Zotto; the base was made by the Trieste stonecutter Antonio Tamburlini.

One of the oldest buildings in the town, mentioned as early as 1384, belonged to the noble Zangrando family at the time of Tartini’s birth. Caterina Zangrando, Giuseppe’s mother, belong to this family. Today, the artist’s birthplace houses the memorial room with valuable musician’s object such as the death mask, the violin, the music score pages and letters. The veduta hall with interesting murals is also worth visiting.

The oldest city centre was probably walled up in the seventh century. The part of the wall that surrounded the oldest part of the town in the area of the cape did not change in its course, it only needed to be thoroughly restored several times. In the final phase of expansion, in the early 16th century, the so called third wall encircled the whole peninsula. In the meantime, a second wall was built, the remains of which is the preserved Gate.

Piran’s town walls initially surrounded only the old town core in Punta. As the town began to expand towards Mandrač, it continually included new quarters forming outside of the walls. Due to this expansion and attacks by external enemies, the walls were upgraded. The remains of the first and second town walls are now embedded in the town centre and you can see them as you stroll through the streets of Piran. The most extensive preserved remnant of the wall with defensive towers on the slopes of Mogoron, which gives the town a characteristic cityscape, is of exceptional historical value. The third wall, completed in the 16th century, embraced the entire peninsula.

The Minorite Monastery of St. Francis was probably founded before 1301, when the Minorites had already begun building the church. It houses a lot of music literature, while the old monastery library boasts books from the 15th century. The Minorite brothers who manage the monastery church, offer spiritual care and organize religious retreats, still live here. The Cloister is one of the most acoustic venues in Slovenia, where many top music events have been taking place for many years. From the cloister, there is an entrance to the Pinacotheca, where paintings by Venetian artists are put on display.

The church in the Minorite monastery complex, dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi, was built in 1318. Its present interior dates from the 17th and its exterior dates from the 19th century. The church is decorated with statues and paintings by Venetian artists and boasts an organ from 1897. Inside the church, there is also the tomb of the Tartini family among the 32 tombs under the paving. The bell tower with three bells from the 13th century is located behind the church.

This smaller church, built in the 15th century with the legacy of a wealthy Piran woman, has a painting of Mary of the Snows above the entrance with a scene of a miracle – the August snow in Rome. The prescious oil painting with fretted frames has been preserved from the time of a Baroque-style renovation in the 17th century. During the restoration they discovered two valuable paintings from the mid 15th century in the tempera on wood technique. The paintings “Crucifixion” and “Annunciation” are a unique example of Gothic table painting in Slovenian Istria.

The Baroque church stands on the site of the former medieval church of St. Michael. It boasts paintings with scenes from the legend of St. Augustine and rich wooden inlays. The wall above the main entrance door is adorned with Brustolon’s large wooden carved frame from the early 18th century with the painting “Mary with Child”.

The church, built in the 14th century, got its present appearance after the Baroque restoration in the 17th century. It is named after St. George, the town’s patron saint, who supposedly saved Piran from a violent storm in 1343. In addition to seven altars and a painted ceiling, the interior of the church is decorated with canvases of the Venetian school, Gothic crucified Jesus from the beginning of the 14th century and statues of St. George and St. Nicholas. There was the first Christian church in the period between the 6th and 7th centuries on the site of the present church.

The baptistery, built during the renovation of the church complex in 1650, replaced the medieval baptistery that originally stood in front of the church. During the construction of the new one, the floor plan of the old baptistery, the domed roof and the skylight were preserved. A window and a Roman sarcophagus from the 1st century were also transferred to the new baptistery. This oldest element in the baptistery was converted into a baptismal font. On two sides of the stone is a relief of a dolphin and a winged boy; a symbol of the transition to the afterlife.

The bell tower, added in the 17th century, is a reduced copy of the bell tower of St. Mark in Venice. It is 46.45 m high and has four bells. The oldest, cast in 1477, still announces full hours today. The bell tower can be climbed by stairs with 15 platforms adorned with images of angels and inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.

When you stand on Punta and look in the direction of Venice, you can only suspect what is going on in the sea, less than 20 meters from the shore. The natural monument of Cape Madona is home to an incredibly diverse multitude of underwater plants and animals. It extends to a depth of 38 meters, which is also the deepest point of the Gulf of Trieste. This puzzle of the sea is called by many underwater Triglav.

The lighthouse on the very tip of the Piranian peninsula is part of the associated buildings, which in addition to the lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper’s apartment consist of the Church of Our Lady of Health and the tower. The famous stone fortress was built in 1617 and was part of the former town walls. It became a lighthouse between 1871 and 1872, when a red light was mounted on it and a small stone building was built next to to house the engine room. The apartment for the lighthouse keeper was built on the fort in 1874. It is built of white slabs of Istrian stone.

The church on Cape Punta, which leans on the lighthouse and the former fortress, was mentioned as early as the 13th century as the church of St. Clement, the patron saint of sailors. In 1631, after the plague epidemic, it was renamed the Our Lady of Health Church. The medieval church was rebuilt in Baroque style in the middle of the 18th century. The ceiling of the nave boasts a Rococo stucco. The main part is the relief depicting the Caritas (Love) allegory.

Of the entire Piran walls on the sea side, only the Renaissance roundel from the year 1508 and a part of the walls with some of the gates are preserved. Among the oldest is the semi-circular Milje Gate with the tower, converted into a residential house.

The main streets of Piran converge on the square that was once called the Old Square – Piazza vecchia. Therefore, it was once considered the main town square. In the middle of it is a stone rainwater reservoir, which was built after a severe drought in the 18th century. Gutters from the roofs of the surrounding houses were led into the collector. Water seeped through stone blocks which cleaned it and was then collected in a large fountain. It was pumped up with a hand pump, which has been preserved to this day. The entrance to the square is adorned with statues of Justice and Law.

Jewish Square was modelled upon the Venetian Jewish ghetto. One of the three atriums once had a large underwater fountain which gathered rain water from the nearby roofs. Today a large, eight-sided plate of white stone stands in its place, along with the four smaller, pierced plates through which the water poured into the fountain. It was all made by the famous sculptor of Piran, Janez Lenassi. St. Stephen’s Church, one of the oldest churches in Piran, is located nearby. The staircase behind the altar leads to the high attic belonging to the Brotherhood of a Happy Last Hour.

In Piran, seven town gates have been preserved, which allowed the entrance through the walls. The Dolfin Gate, erected in the 15th century, is the best-preserved Gothic gate in the town. It is decorated with a crest depicting three dolphins. The Field Gate also dates from the 15th century. Once, a church connected to the town hall stood next to it. The Baroque gate of St. George, restored in the 17th century, is fused with a courthouse built on the site of a former grain and flour warehouse. In addition to the oldest Milje Gate and the first Rašpor Gate built in the Gothic style, which you have already seen on a walk, there is also the Second Rašpor Gate with a pointed arch along the narrow part of the wall with towers, and the Renaissance Marčana Gate from the 16th century.

The mighty Neoclassical palace of Barbojo Fonda Trevisini combines the surnames of important Piran people. The bulk of the funds for its construction was contributed by the high salt official Giuseppe Barbojo, the owner of many salt fields, the president of the salt council of the Twenty and for some time also the mayor of Piran. The Palace but was built in the years 1824-1826. Now it bears the name of the latest majority owner – the members of the Trevisini family.