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The little Istrian town of Lovran is located in an ambience characterised by the blue of the sea and the green slopes of Mt Ucka. Until the 19th century, it was a city renowned for its maritime past, possessed of a picturesque medieval centre. At the beginning of the 20th century, it turned into a fashionable waering place and winter resort for the Austro-Hungarian gentry. The name Lovran derives from the word lovor, or laurel, an evergreen whose freshness gives the place a particular charm. The Romans decked their triumphant heroes and gods with laurel, and according to one legend, Lovran was created when the Roman patrician and statesman Marcus Agripa, in the first century AD, built his summer residence, Tusculum, on the site of today's Lovran town.
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Agripa had the whole world to choose from, yet he picked Lovran. And there is no wonder. In the next twenty centuries, many people from all over the world came and came back again to Lovran, enthralled by the marvellous and quite unparalleled combination of sea and mountain, cityscape and landscape, past and present.
Lovran is a town with a long and diverse past, with a hundred-year-long tradition of tourism. In the Middle Ages, Lovran was a typical Mediterreanean town, with narrow, paved streets, three storey houses packed close together, with steps, chimneys and the little windows characteristic of the coast.
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It was girded with a defensive wall, and the town was entered through three gates that were shut at night. St George's Square (Trg St. Jurja), St George being the patron saint of the town, was the main square in the city and the centre of public life.
On the threshold of the 21st century, Lovran can draw on a rich historical heritage, a hundred-year-old tradition of tourism, a well-preserved nature, a developed infrastructure and everything else that permits a new take-off in the tourist industry combined with sustainable development and respect for all ecological standards.
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