Greetings from Rabac, Yugoslavia!

More postcards, this time from the 1950s-70s

Prelim: in one of the earlier postcard-themed postings, I’ve mentioned I’d be willing to look for specific places in my (grandfather’s) collection, and

Martin Bassani

asked about Rabac, in present-day Croatia.

See here for more on Istria:

A Few Postcards from Old Istria

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Below and in the next dedicated posting, I’ll provide you with a few postcards, but I shall add that they are all from the 1950s through 1970s, it would seem, which is explainable by Rabac’s history (via Wikipedia, slightly edited):

Rabac (Italian: Porto Albona) is a Croatian resort town on Kvarner Bay, just southeast of Labin, in Istria.

Up until the end of the 19th century, Rabac was a small fishing village. British explorer Richard Francis Burton visited the village in 1876 and mentioned it his book The Seaboard of Istria.

Long a small fishing port, Rabac has grown in the 1970s into a resort town with numerous villas and apartment buildings.

How ‘small’ are we talking? The same source (Wikipedia) cites 290 inhabitants in 1953, rising to some 1,373 in 1991, with a slight decline thereafter (pop. 1,257 in 2021).

It’s a small place, but—and those among you who’ve been to the area know—Istria is among the older inhabited placed in Europe and boasts both an awesome landscape, spectacular archaeological sites (esp. Pula/Pola, which boasts one of the best preserved Roman arenas and served as the prime port of the Austro-Hungarian Navy) and has much to offer in terms of European cultural history, from the Rector’s Palace in Koper/Capodistria (a prime example of mediaeval secular gothic architecture) to the Danse Macabre in the Holy Trinity Church of Hrastovlje. Oh, lest I forget, it’s a good place to eat well, too.

And without much further ado, here goes part 1.

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This now serves as the thumbnail of the post, and, lest I forget, welcome to ‘socialist modernity’, Yugoslavia style.

Old Photographs (1950s)

Note the ‘old man’ sitting (next to) ‘the sea’; it’s still a quite common sight, albeit no longer really feasible for locals in summer due to masses of tourists.

Some of More Recent Vintage

Stay tuned for ‘more’ tomorrow!