ommercial port with its long quays stretching towards the railway
station, the imposing mass of the amphitheatre dominating the whole of
that side of the picture. These two structures, the amphitheatre and the
arsenal, show the chief interests of Pola--the glory of antiquity, and
modern utility devoted to defence; for the monuments of mediaeval times
are few in the city, and the destruction wrought alternately by Venice
and Genoa left it poor, and in many parts ruinous, till the modern
revival, with the transference of the headquarters of the Austrian navy
from Venice in 1861. The mouth of the harbour is less than half a mile
across and is over 100 ft. deep. The eastern portion has a depth of 20
ft. against the quays, which are all constructed on made ground. The
quarries on the Brioni Islands have afforded excellent material close at
hand for the buildings and fortifications both in antiquity and in
modern times.

The castle hill was the capitol of the Roman city, and the streets ran
round it, with others diverging like the ladders of a spider's web. A
canal isolating the city from the land existed to the east. Of the land
gates two still remain--the Porta Gemina (anciently the Porta Jovia) and
the Porta Ercole; the arch of the Sergii formed the interior face of a
third (of which a portion of the lower courses remain), the Porta Aurea,
so called probably from its having had grilles of gilded bronze. There
were also seven gates in the walls towards the sea. The forum was twice
the size of the present piazza, which occupies part of its site, and had
twin temples at one end, with the comitium between them, of which one
remains in good preservation, and a portion of the back part of the
other. There was a temple of Jupiter Conservatorius, upon the site of
which the cathedral stands; and one to Minerva, afterwards the site of
the destroyed basilica of S. Maria in Canneto. The theatre was near the
Porta Aurea, and is now marked only by the excavation of its curve in
the hillside and a few ruined arches in a private garden. The
destruction of ancient Pola is largely due to Venice, who appeared to
think that when the communes gave themselves to her she acquired the
right of removing any of the monuments to beautify herself; and it even
went so far as for a patrician to seriously propose to bear the cost of
transporting the amphitheatre to Venice, and re-erecting it on the site
of the present public gardens!

[Illustration: AR