Piran

In pre-Roman times the hills around Piran were home to the Histri, farmers, hunters and fishermen who also raided Roman shipping. Rome took the peninsula in 178–177 BC and covered it with country villas. When the empire declined and Avars and Slavs raided Istria in the late 6th century, people withdrew to easily defended islands and headlands, and by the 7th century Piran, under Byzantine rule, was heavily fortified. The Franks took Istria in 788, and by 952 the town was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Its name probably comes from the Greek pyrrhos, "red", after the reddish flysch stone of the area.

From 1283 to 1797 Piran belonged to the Republic of Venice, governed semi-autonomously by a council of local noblemen with a Venetian official. It fought off attacks by Genoa and pirates, and its salt pans, worked since the 13th century, made it prosperous. Plague killed about two-thirds of the people in 1558, and in the last decades of Venetian rule the town declined in competition with Austrian Trieste. It passed to Austria in 1797, to Napoleon's empire from 1806 to 1814, and back to Austria.

By 1900 Piran was a flourishing market and spa town; the first trolleybus line in what is now Slovenia began running here in 1909, replaced by a tram that ran until 1953. After the First World War it was ceded to Italy. After the Second World War it fell into Zone B of the Free Territory of Trieste under Yugoslav administration and was annexed to Yugoslavia in 1954. Much of its Italian-speaking population left in the Istrian exodus and was replaced by Slovene settlers, and since 1991 the town has been part of independent Slovenia.

Piran's best-known son is Giuseppe Tartini, the violinist and composer born here, whose statue by Antonio Dal Zotto has dominated the main square since 1896, with St George's on the hill above. The painter Cesare Dell'Acqua was also born in the town. For decades summer concerts have been held in the cloister of the Minorite monastery, prized for its acoustics, and the Piran Coastal Galleries, a group of six public contemporary art galleries, are based here.

The town's culture is shaped by its Venetian past and by the two languages. Piran is officially bilingual, and an Italian community keeps its own primary school and grammar school, while much of the population arrived from other parts of Slovenia after the Second World War. Until the mid-20th century Italian was the dominant language; Slovene replaced it after the exodus, and Tartini's birthplace on the main square is now the seat of the Italian community in Slovenia.

The municipality's festival on 15 October commemorates the founding of the first Slovene Partisan naval detachment in 1944. In 2010 the town elected Peter Bossman, a physician from Ghana, as mayor, the first black mayor in the formerly communist countries of Europe. The local football club, NK Portorož Piran, plays at the small Pod Obzidjem stadium below the walls.

Piran is the seat of the Municipality of Piran, which also includes the resort of Portorož and the village of Strunjan. A little over a century ago Piran was an Austro-Hungarian town of more than 15,000 people, roughly the size of Koper. Today it is one of Slovenia's major tourist attractions, with the spas, hotels and casino of Portorož close by, and the University of Primorska runs the aquarium as part of its science centre.

Daily life is lived outdoors for much of the year: people swim from the piers and rocks, walk the promenade towards Fiesa and Portorož, and meet on Tartini Square. Cars are kept out of the old town, and residents use the parking on the waterfront at Fornače and the coastal buses. The bora is less frequent than it once was, but its gusts, mostly from the direction of Trieste, can still exceed 100 km/h and cause trouble for residents.

The territorial claims of Slovenia and Croatia in the Gulf of Piran remain a matter of debate in the border disputes that began after the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Piran eats like the rest of Slovenian Istria, which is known above all for its wines and olive oil. The extra virgin olive oil of Slovenian Istria, slightly bitter and spicy with a strong fruit aroma, has protected status, as does piranska sol, Piran salt, gathered by hand in the salt fields of Sečovlje and Strunjan near the town; a shop on the main square sells it. Istrian prosciutto, istrski pršut, an uncooked, unsmoked dry-cured ham, and meat from boškarin, the local Istrian cattle, are other protected products of the region.

Fuži, the Istrian pasta made by cutting thin sheets of dough into diamonds and folding two corners together, is a regional staple, and brodet, a fish stew made along the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts, belongs to the same tradition. Many restaurants line the waterfront on Prešernovo nabrežje with open-air tables facing the sea, serving fish, meat and mixed grills; smaller seafood restaurants one street back from the harbour tend to be cheaper.

The local wines are the white Malvazija, made from Istrian Malvasia, and the red Refošk, from the Refosco grape grown in Slovenian and Croatian Istria and around Trieste.