Izola

The name is Italian for island, and it is literal: the town centre is a former island, joined artificially to the mainland at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A Roman port called Haliaetum stood southwest of the present town as early as the second century BC, and Izola itself was founded on its island by refugees from Aquileia in the seventh century AD. It appears in a Venetian document as Insula in 932, became Venetian territory outright in 1267, and centuries of that rule left a mark still legible in the place.