ZARA. A rare and beautiful Italian poster illustrated by Metlicovitz in the 1920s, it remained an Italian enclave in Yugoslavia until 1941.

History

In 1797, at the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Austrians received Zara, before it was annexed to the Illyrian Provinces by Napoleon I in 1808—this remained the case until 1813, when Austria recaptured the city until the end of World War I. The Treaty of Rapallo gave the city and several surrounding islands to the Kingdom of Italy.

During World War II, Zara, which became a base for the Italian Navy and later for the German Kriegsmarine, was the victim of 54 Allied bombing raids. The city lost most of its magnificent Venetian palazzi and 19th-century Austro-Hungarian monuments, but some of the older buildings escaped the bombs. The ethnic Italian population (about 20,000 people, or 83% of the Zarois at the start of the war between the Kingdoms of Italy and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941) fled for fear of being massacred by Tito's partisans.

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