Capodistria is at the head of the next bay to the south-west, on rising ground which was once an island, though now joined to the mainland. From the sea the most conspicuous building is a great yellow prison. There is also a naval school there, the cadets from which have to endure a certain amount of chaff when they acknowledge having spent five years at Capodistria. According to Dandolo the city was founded on the island of Capraria, and named in honour of Justin II. (565-578) Justinopolis; the fact of its having been free of money taxes during the Byzantine dominion makes some such origin probable; but it occupies the site of the Roman colony of Ægida, founded in 128 B.C., and a few antique fragments have been found, such as the restored statue of Justice on the communal palace, a Roman work of the Lower Empire, and the reliefs of an ox and a female dancer encrusted in the wall of a garden. In the church of S. Clemente there is also a little round antique altar, used as a holy-water basin.
Under Pietro Orseolo a treaty was made between Venice and Capodistria in 977, under which the hundred amphoras of wine (which had been sent since 932 as an annual present to the doge, and handed by him to the Patriarch of Grado) were made obligatory and a perpetual tribute, while a Venetian officer resided in Capodistria to look after it. Another stipulation was that the city should always be at peace with Venice, even if the rest of Istria were at war. The Venetian representative or consul had the right to sit with the Capodistrian judges whenever a Venetian had cause to appear before them. In 1145, envoys had to go to Venice to swear on the Gospels true and loyal fidelity to S. Mark, the Doge Polano, and all his successors, and to the commune of Venice, undertaking to renew the oath on the election of each new doge. In 1186 the commune was represented by a podestà and four consuls, the year in which the bishopric was founded on the strength of their promise to provide sufficient income. Eight years later they were obliged to decree that if any one did not pay his dues by the usual time he should have his vineyard taken away, and if the tithe of oil was not paid by the Purification, it should be doubled. It was the first Istrian city with a fully formed commune, and the notice of the meeting of the council on July 5, 1186, is the earliest notice preserved of such a meeting. The first statute appears in 1238-1239.
When Venice had acquired the city the senate commanded Tommaso Gritti and Piero Gradenigo to build Castel Leone; it was constructed astride the road which crossed the marshes, so that all travellers and vehicles entering or leaving the city had to pass through it. The walls, for which the Patriarch Gregorio Montelungo was responsible, were damaged in 1278, when the city swore fealty to Venice, and were thrown down on the sea side after the insurrection of 1348. They were not completely repaired till the sixteenth century. In 1550 Michele Sanmicheli, and subsequently his nephew Alvise Brignoli and others were sent by the senate to report, and finally the repair of the walls of many of the Istrian towns was committed to Constantine and Francesco Capi. A hundred years later they were in such a state that Stefano Capello reported that it was useless to guard the gates, for entrance was easy through the ruinous part of the walls. The only portion now remaining is the Porta della Muda, built by Sebastian Contarini in the seventeenth century. It bears an inscription of 1701 stating that the sea then no longer flowed round it.
The Palazzo Comunale was burnt after the revolt of 1348, when the city had to surrender unconditionally, the clergy carrying crosses, and the citizens in procession, followed by the soldiers and the other foreigners, meeting the army outside the gates. Fifty of the persons most compromised were sent to Venice for trial, and the city was punished by increase of taxation and modification of some of the chapters of the statute. A few years after it rebelled again, and was then deprived of all municipal rights. The burnt portion of the palace was ordered to be restored in 1353, but it had to be pulled down afterwards, and in 1385 the senate gave orders to the Podesti Leonardo Bembo to level it and rebuild. It bears resemblance in some of its details to palaces of the Bembo family in Venice. It was not completed till 1447, under Domenico Diedo. The right wing was altered in 1481, and further damaging alterations were made in 1664 by Vincenzo Bembo, who was so proud of his work that he put up a pompous inscription. There are numerous coats of arms of podestàs and busts on the façade, the earliest of which is dated 1432. Under the portico were the "bocche del leone" for secret denunciations, and, though the masks are gone, the chests within are still in position.
At right angles to the Palazzo Comunale is the cathedral, with the campanile projecting and flanking the façade to the south. It has a ground story of Gothic, three pointed arches, the central one pierced by a doorway with clustered pillars, and figures beneath niches above them, and an upper story with classic pilasters and cornice, the central space pierced by a circular window. These are somewhat the characteristics of the cathedral at Cividale, of which two Capodistrians, Bartolommeo Costa and Giovanni Sedula, were architects. It was reconsecrated in 1445, but the upper part was not finished till 1598. The side doors, with beautiful arabesques carved on the jambs, were constructed with material from the tribune in which the big Carpaccio was housed. It was destroyed in 1714 during the restoration of the cathedral. There is a terra-cotta medallion of Constantino Copronymus on the façade. The present campanile is of 1480. The great bell was cast in 1333 by two sons of the celebrated bell-founder, Jacopo da Venezia. Under the bell-chamber of the older campanile was an iron cage in which ecclesiastics guilty of grievous crime were exposed, a punishment abolished in 1497.
The interior of the church, considered the finest of the period in Istria, was recast in 1741 by the Venetian engineer Giorgio Massari. Under the last arch of the nave to the right is a picture by Vittore Carpaccio, signed and dated 1516—a Madonna and Child enthroned upon a damask-hung seat raised on five steps, which are covered with an Oriental carpet. Upon the steps saints are ranged, SS. Jerome, Roch, and an old man to the left—perhaps Zacchariah or Joseph; SS. Sebastian, George, and a bishop to the right—probably S. Louis of Toulouse: at the bottom a little lute-playing angel sits, flanked by two amorini on a lower level with white drapery. The Virgin is seated in an arched vestibule with a flat ceiling through which the sky and trees are seen. It was restored in 1829. Another picture from S. Nicolò near the port shows the Virgin with SS. Nicholas of Bari and John the Baptist. The organ wings were painted by Vittore's son Benedetto in 1538, and two other pictures of his are affixed to the west wall. The subjects are the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Presentation in the Temple. Other pictures by him are a Coronation of the Virgin, in the communal palace, signed and dated 1537, his earliest known picture; the Virgin between SS. James and Bartholomew, 1538; and the town damaged by a sea-storm. In Santa Anna is a picture of the Name of Jesus adored by SS. Paul, John the Baptist, Francis, and Bernardino, and surrounded by cherubs' heads. In the communal palace an indifferent picture of the entrance of a podestà escorted by the councillors (dated 1517) is ascribed to Vittore Carpaccio, who has been claimed as a Capodistrian, as his son Benedetto certainly was. He lived in the Largo di Porta S. Martino, in an old house of two stories. In 1500 it was inhabited by the Scarpaza family, and before that they possessed a little farm in the locality called San Vittore; but the Capodistrian tradition as to Vittore's birthplace is erroneous, since he was born at Venice of a family of Mazzorbo, record of which has been found by Signor Molmenti. Lazzaro Sebastiani is also claimed as Capodistrian, and memorials of two other painters exist, Cleriginus de Justinopoli, who was living in 1471, and Giorgio Vincenti. A Mag. Domenico di Capodistria began the pretty octagonal chapel at Vicovaro above Tivoli.
THE "FONTICO" AND S. GIACOMO, CAPODISTRIA
