There are music venues and there are music venues. No-one has fond memories of the now-demolished Wembley Arena or other depressing suburban steel boxes. But I’ll bet you can still see in your mind the best gigs you have been to at the Brixton Academy (since you weren’t asking, mine would be a toss up between Radiohead on The Bends tour or Placebo on the Black Market Music tour). Great venues make bands up their game.
So location matters, but what makes a great venue? You can’t have a Brixton Academy or Bowery Ballroom everywhere, and to be honest CBGBs would have seemed a bit odd in Sicily. Better sometimes to lean into what fits the place.
And so to the Arena in Pula, on the Istrian coast of Croatia. It’s a beautiful part of the world, and perfect for holidays: rocky peninsulas and tear-drop islands, the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic,Roman ruins, towns which in architecture and cuisine show a connection to Italy across the sea rather than Zagreb and the Balkans across the mountains, day trips to Venice and Trieste, vineyards, and temperatures more in the high 20s than the raging heat that is the Mediterranean nowadays.
The Arena itself is a spectacular version of the Colosseum, and the only remaining Roman ampitheatre to have four side towers entirely preserved. It was constructed between 27 BC and AD 68, and is among the world’s six largest surviving Roman arenas. The arena is justly Croatia’s best-preserved ancient monument, eclipsing even Diocletian’s Palace in Split (but make sure you visit that too). As the pictures show it is jaw-dropping and on a scale that is hard to comprehend.
Best of all, rather than preserve it in aspic, the arena is used for the same purpose as in ancient times: entertainment. Albeit rather than killing people it is now a concert venue, at least at night. A stage with a proper sound system has been erected, and every summer bands do their stuff under the eternal stars. It can be a bit of a legacy lineup – this year has included Jean-Michel Jarre (sad I missed it, I went to both of his Destination Docklands concerts in 1988) and Grace Jones. The Foo Fighters and Duran Duran have played there recently. and there have also been the to-be-expected opera singalongs from Domingo, Bocelli, Carreras and the like. Not to take anything away from what were probably very cool evenings.
All I can say is that if you heading to this part of the world – and really you should – then why not see who is playing and time a trip to the oldest music venue you’ll ever go to.