This week’s dream: ruins of Pula, Croatia

James Joyce hated Pula. The Croatian city was the main naval base of the Austro-Hungarian empire when he was exiled to it in 1904 by his employer, the Berlitz language school - a "naval Siberia", he called it.

The phrase sounds quaint today, says Lucy Hughes-Hallett in Condé Nast Traveller. Pula has long since escaped the icy grip of its Hapsburg overlords to become a vibrant, bustling modern port. In its charming old quarter, their

grand old townhouses jostle with the remnants of other fallen empires - Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and all are treated with the same "refreshing" irreverence by the locals.

Pula's Roman forum is still its main square. At night, townspeople congregate in the bars and cafés around it, and teenagers loll on the steps of the first-century Temple of Augustus, "its narrow Corinthian portico is a beautiful, silent shock amid the hurly burly".

The Cvajner café nearby is a medieval hall, covered with Gothic frescos, where "sleek young people sit on