Labin - Marshal Tito Square

Labin is a town in eastern Istria whose older quarter stands on a hill. Its former walls separated this centre from routes leading to the lower town and surrounding area.

Marshal Tito Square is an open space before the entrance. Colourful façades and cafés border one side, the town wall the other; here visitors turn from the broad urban space into the old, narrower streets.

The square is younger than the oldest part of Labin. It developed outside the town gate, where townspeople and people from the surrounding area could meet without entering the walled centre. Houses along its edges were built gradually, while the public space changed in appearance. Small churches and cemeteries also stood in the area before these changes, so today's open view does not reveal all its earlier layers.

Several different sights stand on and immediately beside the square. The town loggia recalls public life before modern municipal administration, St. Florus Gate leads into the walled town, and the round Torjon Bastion marks its defensive edge. The façades also include Our House and the city administration building.

In the late 19th century, a larger municipal building rose beside the square, giving the space by the older entrance a new administrative focus. The varying heights and materials of the surrounding buildings reveal this development without a uniform, pre-planned frontage: a row of colourful houses faces the stone bastion, the loggia remains open to the square, and paths descend from its edge or continue through the gate.

To get your bearings, it helps to cross the square first and look back towards the town gate. Only then does the relationship between the outer public space, the defensive wall and the denser street network beyond become clear. The square is therefore both a place in Labin in its own right and a starting point for exploring its old town.