In the summer of 1981 I was just finishing a design project in Pakostane, near Zadar, small city on Adriatic coast in todays Croatia. It was part of Yugoslavia then. Project was to make architectural plans, overview the rebuilding of the existing old authentic Mediterranean stone building in the centre of the city, and review completed project of Disco Club on two floors and small apartment with the terrace on the top floor. Whole project lasted for over the year.

Mira and me, we were together for over a year then, went for the opening of the club, picked up the honorarium and took the ferryboat across the Adriatic to Ancona. See the map above for the almost three months long trip we will be talking about here.
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From Ancona we took a short trip [only 200km] to Rome. Do we need to tell you how fascinating was this first visit to the Italian capital. Roma is magic!
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Anywhere you turn some overwhelming sights are visible. But we were prepared, we had map of the city complete with the metro map :)[check the photo to the right above]. Campidoglio Square, other two photos above, is one of the best urban squares anywhere. More about this space, of course in our collection, here =>
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That week we spent in the city was extremely stimulating. Every street, every structure was reflection of some very distantor more recent past. Remember Rome was founded 2727 years ago according to the legend.
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Of course Vatican, city within the city, capital of Roman Catholic Church, with St Peter's Basilica was also on the list for the visit.
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From Rome we took the the road to the south all the way to the very last village, Pachino, on the south tip of the island of Sicily..
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back to the top ⇡

Malta. That was our next destination point. It is just 80 km across the see to this tiny island country. It was first inhabited in 5900 bc, named after Greek term for place of honey or place for sweetness, Melité.
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First impression is that it is quite different than any other country in Europe, and believe us, we visited almost all of them before 1981. The influence of Arabs, Greeks, Romans and British is making a very unusual impression. Locals are using Maltese to communicate with themselves and in that case, you can't recognize a single word, it sounds like Arabic, but nothing else.
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Malta, city state with capital Valleta is only 316 km2 and with very large density. Today [2024] it is having 540 000 people. Back in 1981 when we visited it was much less, only 330 000. It was a British colony until 1964, and beside Maltese English is still official language of the state. History is noticeable all around.
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98% of population of Malta is Roman Catholic. It is another strange detail. It was British colony for a long time and under influence of various invaders.

Next on the list was Tunisia. To go there we had to take the ferry back to Pozzallo, Sicily, and across the island to Palermo. We liked these ferry rides, once you pay for the ticket you have free accommodation on the deck, observing the stars from our comfortable sleeping bags. This ride was only five hours long but still good enough for a short nap.
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Tunisia is a Country in North Africa with around 12 million people. The capital, Tunis, is quite a big city, with probably over one million people living there. It has a coast of 1300km and the only area along this coast is fertile. The rest of the country, on the other side of the Atlas mountains, is the northern tip of the Sahara desert.

We stayed initially in very cheap accommodation, but it looked very dangerous so for the rest of our stay we were in the little hotel on Yugoslavia Street, quite appropriate for us with Yugoslav Passports.

Exceptionally friendly people were ready to talk to us, to open up a conversation about who we were, and where we were from. The Non-Aligned Countries Movement, to which both our countries belonged and very frequently that was a topic of exchange of ideas for the future. Beside Yugoslavia Malta was only other European county also belonging to the movement.
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Before we came to Tunisia we thought that it would be showing more visibly the Islamic side of the state. That was not the case. As you can see in the photo above right even female police officers were not covered.
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Side streets were with most vivid impressions. Old memories from our youth when those craft shops still existed in our country were strong reminders. The influence of all the peoples from Berbers, Phoenicians, and various Semitic is obvious.
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Kids on every sight were interested to see who we were, especially friendly to Mira.
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We landed in the capital city of Tunis, but soon after we went to the northern suburb where the ruins of the ancient city of Cartage are located. Cartage is a city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. It is carefully preserved and worth visiting.
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The only problem was that it was 45˚C and no shade in sight.
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The next visit was to the city of Bizerte, some 65km to the north. We stayed in a small hotel on the beach, an excellent place to relax. Our original plan was to visit Algiers and the cemetery where my uncle, Aleksandar was buried. My Grandmother Anka pregnant and unmarried, during the First World War in 1914 joined the retreating Serbian army as a nurse and set out through the mountain passes of Albania. Army and herself ended in Algiers. Unfortunately, my uncle lived for only 40 days and was buried at the Serbian military cemetery in Algiers.

Unfortunately travel to Algiers was practically impossible. There was no train or bus and the only way is to travel those one thousand kilometres by taxi, waiting for days to find five co-travelers, very expensive and no guarantee that we will ever arrive.
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Change of plan. Let's take the ferry to Sardinia. The only way there was to go back to Sicily [one night on the ferry], then another night to Cagliari, Sardinia. We went to the north to the city called Palau.
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One of the main attractions was nuraghes, cone-shaped stone monuments spread throughout Sardinia. [Photos above in the middle and right]. Unique in their kind developed during the Nuragic Age between 1900 and 730 BC as a protection for the population during frequent invasions. Nowadays, about seven thousand nuraghes remain standing throughout the island.
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I observed sight that was very attractive to my architecturally educated eye. The specific way that villas were designed. Always white and resembling the authentic rocks all around the island.
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Florence, the capital of the province of Tuscany, is where we are now after another night on the ferry boat and a short trip from Sardinia to the Roma Port of Civitavecchia.

Michelangelo, Duomo - Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Palazzo and Ponte Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, just a few listed here...
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In 1981, the Original statue of Michelangelo's David was still displayed on the Piazza della Signoria.
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And unforgettable views of Florence from the Medici Gardens. Or rooftops with those typical Florence chimneys.
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Venezia. [ see 30 more photos from Venezia on our photoblog ]. What else do we need to say?

Lions, collected all over the world and placed on prominent spaces, are still guarding the city, or that is what they taught back then when the Venezia Maritime Republic, established in 697 and lasting over 11000 years, was the strongest Mediterranean country with Dodge as a head of the state.
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Secluded churches with very intimate atmospheres, famous Venezia Canals and of course, Art Biennale di Venezia, held every odd year are unavoidable.

This was not the end of our journey. We took a road along the Adriatic coast to the little island of Rava, where our friend had a house. Stayed there for a week or so, to recover from an exhausting trip, more from impressions than anything else.

All 68 photos collected here were taken by my favourite Asahi Pentaxt ME camera. As you can probably figured out these are not digital images, they were taken on the Kodakchrome 64 film and then scanned.
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This was not the end of our journey. We took a road along the Adriatic coast to the little island of Rava, where our friend had a house. Stayed there for a week or so, to recover from an exhausting trip, more from impressions than anything else.

All 68 photos collected here were taken by my favourite Asahi Pentaxt ME camera. I purchased that camera in 1974, necessary tool for the 4 months long trip to India. As you can probably figured out these are not digital images, they were taken on the Kodachrome 64 film for colour slides and scanned many years later.
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Good buy for now, we will not add more images to those 68 already here. Come back for something else.