Town Gate

Why it is worth your time

The town gate is the only place by which Primosten was ever entered: a stone portal at the causeway's end, there where until the 16th century stood the drawbridge that was raised at night, turning the islet back into a fortress. When the danger of Ottoman raids passed, the bridge was replaced by the causeway, but the gate remained, with an arch of dressed stone and a threshold worn by the knees of generations who carried everything through it: the catch, the vine, newlyweds and the dead. Today the gate is the symbolic border of two worlds: before it car parks, hotels and the summer bustle, behind it stone lanes in which time runs slower.

Precisely for that one should enter through it on foot and consciously, as it was entered for centuries: pause under the arch, look toward the bell tower and let the street itself pull you uphill. By the gate stand boards with the town's history, and the camera works best from outside, from the riva, when gate, church tower and the row of stone facades compose into one frame. Entry is, of course, free at every hour: Primosten's oldest door closes never again.