Library AMEU-ISH, Ljubljana (ISHLJ)
  • Tourism at home : an Istrian message in stone
    Weber, Irena
    On the local road near village Krkavče one comes across a road sign that reads "Kamen 5km" (The Stone), The stone in case is a megalith of a contested origin and while archeologists and ethnologist ... cannot decide whether it is Roman or Celtic, the local population claims that the megalith (or menhir) is definitely Slavic. The stone atracted quite a lot of media attention a few years back when it was transported to Ljubljana in order to get some restoration work done. The locals suspicious of restorer's intentions formed a delegation and went to Ljubljana to check what was going on with their stone and make sure that they will get an original back and not a copy. When the stone was safely back on its little hill and the roads signs properly placed (in Slovene only, clearly meant to inform domestic tourists) the arguments of undisputed Slavic origin of the stone appeared in local newspapers and journals. The megalith served to establish Slavic (not to say Slovenian) distinctiveness and antiquity. The paper takes other examples of regional tourist markers made of stone (i.e. monumental sculpture "Šavrinka" by Jože Pohlen in Hrastovlje, a restored watermill in Dragonja valley, "a house of wonders", the structure of two main squares in Piran) to look at the process of nationalization of Istrian landscape.
    Source: MESS. Vol. 5, Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School, Piran, Pirano, Slovenia 2001 and 2002 (2003, str. 115-136)
    Type of material - conference contribution
    Publish date - 2003
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 958093

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