page_title: Piran
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Piran / History
caption_attribution_description: English: historic picture of Piran zgodovinska slika Pirana
context_page_description: Piran is a town in southwestern Slovenia on the Gulf of Piran on the Adriatic Sea. It is one of the three major towns of Slovenian Istria. The town has much medieval architecture, with narrow streets and compact houses. Piran is the administrative seat of the Municipality of Piran and one of Slovenia's major tourist attractions. Until the mid-20th century, Italian was the dominant language, but it was replaced by Slovene as demographics shifted.
context_section_description: In the pre-Roman era, the hills in the Piran area were inhabited by Illyrian Histri tribes who were farmers, hunters and fishermen. They were also pirates who disrupted Roman trade in the northern Adriatic.
  
  The Piran peninsula was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 178 and 177 BC and settled in the following years with rural homes (villae rusticae). 
  The decline of the Roman Empire, from the 5th century AD onward, and incursions by the Avars and Slavs at the end of the 6th century, prompted the Roman population to withdraw into easily defensible locations such as islands or peninsulas. This started local urbanisation and by the 7th century, under Byzantine rule, Piran had become heavily fortified. Despite the defences, the Franks conquered Istria in 788 and Slavs settled in the region. By 952, Piran had become a part of the Holy Roman Empire.
  The earliest reliable records of the area are in the 7th century work Cosmographia by an anonymous cleric of Ravenna. The name of the town most probably originates from the Greek "pyrrhos", which means "red", because of the reddish flysch stones commonly found in the town's area.
  Some historians also refer it to "pyros", meaning fire, due to ancient lighthouses which were supposed to be on the edge of the marina.
  From 1283 to 1797, the town became part of the Republic of Venice, where it was governed in a semi-autonoumous way, with a council of local noblemen assisting the Venetian delegate. Several enemy (e.g. from the Republic of Genoa) and pirate assaults were repelled during the late Middle Ages; a great pestilence hit the town in 1558, killing about two thirds of the population. The last decades of Venetian rule were marked by decadence, due to the competition with the nearby Austrian port town of Trieste.
  The town was annexed to the Austrian Empire in 1797; but during the years from 1806 to 1814, when it was ceded to the Napoleonic Empire. On 22 February 1812, the Battle of Pirano was fought between a British and a French ship of the line in the vicinity of Piran. This was a minor battle of the Adriatic campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Rivoli had been recently completed at Venice. The French naval authorities intended her to bolster French forces in the Adriatic, following a succession of defeats in the preceding year. Captain John Talbot of HMS Victorious arrived off Venice in mid-February and blockaded the port. When the Rivoli attempted to escape under the cover of fog, Talbot chased her and forced her to surrender in a five-hour battle, the Rivoli lost over half her crew as either wounded or dead. This was the only battle ever fought in the sea nowadays belonging to Slovenia.
  At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Piran was an Austro-Hungarian town with over 12,000 inhabitants, larger than the nearby Koper. It was a flourishing market and spa town with good transport connections. The first trolleybus line in the Balkans was introduced to public service on 24 October 1909 in Piran. In 1912, it was replaced by a tramway that operated on the same route till 1953.
  After the First World War, together with Trieste and all Istria, the town was ceded to Italy. There were no particular events in those years, until Italy entered the Second World War in 1940. With the defeat of the Axis powers and the rise of Tito's rule, Piran was assigned to the Free Territory of Trieste, Zone B, under Yugoslavian administration. The town was annexed to Yugoslavia in 1954, according to the London Memorandum signed together with Italy. A significant part of Piran's population chose to emigrate to Italy or abroad in the final phase of the Istrian exodus, rather than stay in socialist Yugoslavia. The annexation to Yugoslavia was finally ratified with the Osimo Treaty in 1975, signed by Italy as well. Since 1991, Piran has been part of independent Slovenia.
  On 24 October 2010, Slovenia became the first country of former communist Europe to elect a black mayor. The physician Peter Bossman, who came from Ghana in the late 1970s, was elected the Mayor of Piran
caption: Piran before the end of the 19th century
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