Pazin is a town in west Croatia, the administrative seat of Istria County. It is known for the medieval Pazin Castle, the former residence of the Istrian margraves.
Geography
The town had a population of 8,638 in 2011, of which 4,386 lived in the urban settlement. In 1991 it was made the capital of the county for its location in the geographical centre of the Istrian peninsula and in order to boost the development of its interior territories.
Climate
Since records began in 1961, the highest temperature recorded at the local weather station at an elevation of was , on 3 August 2017. The coldest temperature was , on 8 January 1985.
History
thumb|left|170px|Roman gravestone discovered in [[Moncalvo di Pisino]]
Pazin was built in an area rich in history and inhabited since ancient times. The burg surrounding the castle was inhabited since prehistory. Some of the surrounding rural settlements, such as Glavizza, Beram, which features a necropolis dating from the 7th to 5th century BC, and the castellieri of Bertossi, likewise inhabited since prehistoric times, developed into urban centers, while others became burgs around newly built castles, and others still remained rural villages. with Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus, believing that her longevity was due to it.
The current settlement of Pazin originated with the houses built around a castle erected by Germanic rulers. These were the houses of the family relatives and feudal settlers, to which were later added those of the foreign artisans, who offered their services to the lords of the castle as well as their employees and subjects. It then belonged to the Imperial March of Istria, which had originally been under the suzerainty of the newly established Duchy of Carinthia in 976, but separated together with the March of Carniola in 1040.
In the 12th century, Mitterburg Castle was in possession of the Lower Carniolan count Meinhard of Schwarzenburg, who held the office of a vogt of the Poreč bishops (in Latin documents he is known as Cernogradus), and established the Pazin County (earldom). Upon his death, Pazin was inherited by his son-in-law Count Engelbert III of Gorizia (Görz) in 1186.
While most of Istria had gradually been annexed by Venice, Engelbert's descendant Count Albert III of Gorizia in 1374 bequested his Mitterburg estates to the Austrian House of Habsburg, who attached them to their Duchy of Carniola and gave it out in fief to various families, the last of which was the comital House of Montecuccoli Both the Turks and the Venetians attacked the town of Draguccio (Draguć), in the Pisinese, and part of the County of Pazin since 1350, and destroyed the settlement around its castle during Austrian times. After the little town passed to Venice, the Uskoks and Austrians gave it the same treatment. The last Ottoman incursion in Istria occurred in Pazin in 1511. On this occasion, they destroyed the castle.
thumb|200px|[[Lion of Saint Mark inside Pazin Castle]]
In 1508, during the War of the League of Cambrai, the city was conquered by Venetian forces under Bartolomeo d'Alviano, and annexed by the Republic of Venice. It remained under Venetian rule until 1509. During its time under the Serenissima, Francesco Loredan was the castellan of the fortress, while Secondo de Cà Pesaro served in the position of captain of Pazin, as provveditore of the Republic of Venice.
Slavs inhabited the countryside around Pazin since the 9th century; they worked for the German landowners, who lived in the small fortresses and rocks, built on the edges of the cliffs. The Italians of Pisino trace their origins to the pre-existing Roman community living in the area of the County of Pazin, having resisted the expansion and assimilation of the newcomers. The Italian ethnicity in the County of Pazin was also kept alive and powered by the continuous contact and relationships with the nearby and strictly Italian communities of the Pola and Parenzo (Poreč) areas.
As with the other Istrian counties, the notary and diplomatic language of Pazin remained Latin, in preference to the German language. The Istrian Demarcation (Razvod istarski) was written in 1325 in Croatian and in the Glagolitic script. Beside this debated document, there is only one document written in Croatian, a borders act between Kožljak and Mošćenička Draga, which, however, was written in Croatian to please to chieftains of the Mošćenička Draga area, subjects of the lords of Kastav, who didn't understand Latin. The only official language of the public and private documents of the County of Pazin was Latin, which in the 17th century was replaced by the Italian language. Even the acts and the registers from the captain administration were written in Latin, and then in Italian; German, which was still marginally used up to the 16th century, was used ever less, and finally disappeared in the 17th century.
Until 1918, the town (under the name Pisino) was part of the Austrian monarchy (Austrian side after the compromise of 1867), seat of the district of the same name, one of the 11 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in the Austrian Littoral province.
In the same year, Pazin and all the Peninsula of Istria were transferred to the Kingdom of Italy. Benito Mussolini, then, introduced a fascist regime in Italy which, under the "Duce", began to Italianize the region. During World War II, the Pazin Decisions were declared, which proclaimed the unification of Istria with Croatia. Most of Istria became part of Yugoslavia after World War II with the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947, and subsequently became part of modern-day Croatia.
Education
Public education was neglected until the 16th century, when some priests started to teach the basics of Latin to the children of the local nobles and the bourgeoisie. Thereafter, the Pazin comune started to hire an Italian tutor (precettore italiano), who had also to serve as the organist of the Church of San Nicolò. The young Pazin students who wanted to pursue their studies in the humanities or philosophy would then move to Trieste or Rijeka, where they would study in the local Jesuit colleges. Those who then wanted to continue with higher studies would often go to Padua. In 1899, by order of the Austrian government, the first Croatian Gymnasium of Pazin was to be set up, which caused a "manifestation of Italianness" throughout the Julian March.