Rovinjsko Selo

On the road from Rovinj to Kanfanar, only five or six kilometers distant from Rovinj, there is the village of Rovinjsko Selo, from the hills of which there is a beautiful view of the City of Rovinj and the Rovinj archipelago.

Today it is a village only by its name since it keeps developing and little by little becoming a suburb of Rovinj. On one square kilometer territory, from the past days about 400 houses have been built. The older houses are grouped on several locations (Rudelici, Cupici, Morovi, Vicani- bearing the names of the families which have been living there many decades ago), all of them representing a beautiful example of rural architecture from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, today quite all of them renovated.

The old houses are beautiful ground-floor stone buildings with baladur (stone porch), sterna (stone well), and a courtyard enclosed by the stone fence within which there can still be found some baker’s ovens about a hundred years old. The newly built houses are incorporated within the old nucleus or on the margins of the village. They are connected with little streets on the right and on the left from the main village road, leading to fields divided by low stone walls.

Rovinjsko Selo, scattered on hills and in the canal stretching from the Kasternak hill towards Rovinj, surrounded by deep green, has a contemporary structure necessary for a quiet and comfortable life outside the town, and-at the same time-so close to the town and the sea. Rovinjsko Selo has a little more than 700 inhabitants, and in the summer, with tourists and weekend-guests, this number is considerably increased. The majority of inhabitants work in the nearby Rovinj and Pula, while others live and work in Selo, engaged in handicraft trades, trade or agriculture, or enjoying the earned retirement.

HISTORY

Traces of ancient settlements-castelliers- on the elevations in the surroundings of Rovinj can be found on various locations (with 24 archaelogically examined settlements), and among them there are Gomila, Gradina and Kanastrak. Gumila, a hill in the eastern part of Rovinjsko Selo, is today a rather large pile of ruinous stone. Even at the Roman time, the life in the surroundings continued (Karojba, Luzina). However, Rovinjsko Selo itself has existed from the Middle Ages.

A group of settlers called Morlacs founded it in 1525. It is certain that these were Slavs, organized in a rural institution with zupan (district-perfect) as its head. Judging from written documents, these were Croatian immigrants from the Zadar area who had populated the territory of today’s Rovinjsko Selo following the permission of Venice and running away from the Turks. The ancient documents suggest they were often in conflict with the Rovinj Kaptol, both because the issue of givings to the city and the damage done by their cattle, together with the issue of choosing a priest knowing the language and the Illyric script thus practicing church rites in Slavic language. The zupan represented the village in its relationships with the parish and with Kaptol in Rovinj. He submitted petitions in the name of the inhabitants, led negotiations, reached agreements, took care of keeping public peace and order among the inhabitants, together with caring about public health and being in charge of reporting the outbursts of contageous diseases. He was chosen among the most capable and most honoured natives, in the beginning-for a period of three months- and later for a period of one year. He had to be confirmed by the Rovinj parish, that is- the podestat.

The largest part of the Istrian peninsula – including Rovinj – was under the rule of the Republic of Venice, and the inhabitants of the city were divided, consisting of noblemen, commoners and resident foreigners. The podestat represented the highest administrative and legal authority. The inhabitants of Rovinjsko Selo did not belong to the city territory, they rather had their own direction, and, being an individual community, they had their incomes at free disposition. They were free peasants- individual owners with the right to dispose of the owned territory and with an obligation to give the tithe to the Church, to pay the urban imposts and to transport the wood needed by the Venice armoury.
Following the fall of the Republic of Venice, Rovinjsko Selo and other parts of Istria were included in the Austrian monarchy after the Napoleonic wars.

In 1876, a young teacher Stjepan Ziza born in the village of Kosinozici near Nova Vas in the Porec area came to Selo. This great person of the Istrian national revival, collector of popular lore, customs and folk songs, introduced Croatian to school education (Croatian elementary school was opened in 1844), and considerably contributed to a general improvement of education of Selo and to the foundation of cultural associations. It is thanks to him that the National reading-room, and later library was opened in Rovinjsko Selo in 1898.
After the First World War, in 1918, Rovinjsko Selo had been under the rule of the Fascist Italy until its capitulation in 1943. By the end of the Second World War, during the period of German occupation, Selo had many of its inhabitants actively participating in the movement of national liberation.

When the war was over, gloomy times arrived bringing hunger, poverty, getting forced to enter into farm cooperatives, to work in mines, “the volountary work”, the requisition of food. Disappointed young people moved to towns. The “red regime” becomes less rigid. Selo started developing.
Today Rovinjsko Selo, as a unit of local autonomy, is a part of Rovinj. It has its Local committee through which the inhabitants directly participate in creating and dealing the questions connected with the development of their settlement.