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Austro-Hungarian Heritage and Tourism Discourses in Pula, Croatia

This paper will explore the links between tourism and cultural heritage in the city of Pula, in the north-eastern Adriatic region of Istria, focusing in particular on the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian period. Analysing the way heritage is represented and mobilised in tourist-oriented discourses to construct a particular image of a destination can also reveal certain ideological positions which can be related to local, regional or broader political, social and cultural values and identifications. In spite of a strong tradition in Croatian (and previously Yugoslavian) historiography of representing Austria-Hungary as a „prison of nations“, a despotic multi-ethnic empire which suppressed the rights of newly self-conscious nations, this period of Croatian history is now being re-evaluated in a more positive light, especially in urban centres, as a period when Croatia became part of a modern, urban and cosmopolitan European cultural sphere. The process of joining the EU was accompanied, in the sphere of tourism promotion, by a growing emphasis on long-standing cultural belonging to „Europe“ (conceptualised primarily as Western and Central Europe). Pula, whose fast and intense growth and modernisation were determined by its selection as the seat of the imperial navy in the 19th century, provides a particularly good case study. Specific regional politics and the multiculturalism dominating recent Istrian public discourse add another layer of complexity. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper will analyse visual and textual representations of Pula’s Austro-Hungarian heritage in recent tourist promotional materials and its role as a symbolic resource for constructing contemporary urban identity.

tourism ; Austro-Hungarian Empire ; Pula ; heritage ; nostalgia ; Europe

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