World War Ii Graffiti Tour
Vodnjan is a town with unusual traces of the past. On the walls of its older houses, numerous graffiti dating back to the Second World War and the postwar period are still visible – some of the best‑preserved and most abundant examples in Istria. Written in Italian in the 1940s, many have retained their original form and content.
This guided tour is conducted exclusively in English.
Meeting point:
Vodnjan Tourist Board, Narodni trg/Piazza del popolo 10
Registrations:
The guided tour is free of charge, but registration is required by email.
The maximum number of participants is 20.
Though faded over the years, these anti‑fascist, pro‑Yugoslav, and communist messages offer a different, innovative way of reading history: not through archives and museums, but through worn facades and overlooked corners of everyday space.
The guided walk is conceived as a shared exploration of the graffiti in their original context: a window into a universe that historically held so much depth and breadth. Even if today the turbulent political, cultural, and social history of Vodnjan and the wider Istria region lives on only in fragmentary traces, the layering that surrounds sheds light on the everyday and the exceptional, the local and the global.
The complex postwar reality, as reflected on the walls of the town, goes beyond the macro‑level history, mixing the experiences of individuals who, with their acts, have encoded - and sometimes memory-laden - public messages. These messages today function as unofficial monuments and landmarks; small gestures, simple messages, and authentic voices of the past.
