Walk the Gologorica line
Chapter two of this line, and chapter three. Everything here is inside a triangle twelve kilometres on a side — Gologorica, Gračišće, Pićan — with Pazin in the middle of it and the family's own archive sixty kilometres away at Rijeka. It is the densest ground this family has.
The Carnia walk was about a place the family left. This one is about the place they became themselves in. The surname is first written at Gologorica in the baptismal book of 1661; the house on the square carries a portal dated 1711; the man who wrote the history of Istria was born in that house in 1809 and is buried four hundred metres from it. Three of those things can be touched in an afternoon.
Distances are trivial — Gologorica to Gračišće is eleven kilometres by road, Gračišće to Pićan is five — and the roads are good. What is not trivial is access: the house is privately owned and lived in, the parish archives are behind a priest, and the family's own papers are in a state archive that wants a written request. Half of this itinerary is correspondence you send six weeks before you fly.
Base yourself at Pazin. It is the county town, it has the archive, and everything on days two to four is within twenty minutes of it.
Pazin
The centre of the old Habsburg County, the seat of the Državni arhiv u Pazinu (DAPA), and within twenty minutes' drive of every village on this itinerary. It also has the castle, the chasm and the Ethnographic Museum of Istria, which will fill any afternoon an archive closes on you.
Fly to Pula (40 km, 45 minutes) or Trieste (100 km). Rijeka is 60 km east on the A8 through the Učka tunnel, and you will be driving that road anyway for the archive. A car is not optional here: Gologorica has no bus worth the name.
April to June, or September to October. The archives close for parts of August, the villages are hot and empty in high summer, and the light for photographing cut stone is best in spring. Avoid the week of the Assumption.
The itinerary
- 1
Pazin, and the archive you must write to first
Pazin · a full day, booked six weeks out
Do the paperwork before the walking. Two of the four things this itinerary most needs are in reading rooms, and neither will be handed over on the day.
- 1a
Državni arhiv u Pazinu — the Istrian state archive
Book aheadThe parish registers of Gologorica and Gračišće are here on microfilm, and this archive has read parts of them from the family's own photographs of the reading-room screens. The originals of the Status Animarum — the books of souls that give house 5, house 19, house 24 and their four generations — are the single richest thing in Istria for this family.
At the doorAsk specifically for the Status Animarum of Gallignana and of Gologorica, and for anything catalogued under «De Franceschi» as a family fond. Elvis Orbanić, the director, works on the Pićan diocese himself and is named in this archive's own sources.
- 1b
Pazin castle and the Ethnographic Museum of Istria
Publicly visibleThe Kaštel is the building the whole county was administered from — the county whose documented history Carlo's son Camillo wrote. The museum holds the material culture of exactly the households in these registers.
- 1c
An afternoon reading the ground
Publicly visiblePazin sits on the Foiba, the chasm Dante and Jules Verne both used. From the castle terrace you can see the shape of the county: the Čepić basin to the north-east, the ridge of the Učka behind it, the hill villages on their spurs. Every village on this itinerary is visible from within twenty kilometres of this spot.
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- 2
Gologorica — the house, the shield, and the grave
Pazin → Cerovlje → Gologorica · 15 km · a full day
This is the day the itinerary exists for. Give it all of the light.
- 2a
The house on the square
Ask permission«Na trgu je pokraj crkve velika kamena palača obitelji De Franceschi, dvokatna građevina s balkonom i portalom iz 1711., ukrašena grbom i natpisom te reljefom s prikazom Isusa» — on the square, beside the church, the great stone palace of the De Franceschi family, a two-storey building with a balcony and a portal of 1711, decorated with a coat of arms and an inscription and a relief of Jesus. That is a civil-engineering journal describing it in 2012 without any interest in the family. Radmila Matejčić, in 1979: «A Moncalvo di Pisino la famiglia Defranceschi innalza il proprio palazzetto con portico ad arcate e blasone sulla facciata» — with an arcaded loggia and arms on the front. And Carlo, privately, about 1873: «Il mio trisavolo fabbricò la nostra casa nel 1711 come da relativa iscrizione» — my great-great-grandfather built our house in 1711, as the inscription says. Three independent witnesses, a century apart, describing the same three stones. They are still there.
At the doorIt is somebody's home. Knock, explain, and ask before you photograph anything closer than the lane: «Buon giorno — sto ricostruendo la storia della famiglia De Franceschi. Posso fotografare il portale e lo stemma?» The lane and the square are public; the loggia and the courtyard are not.
- 2b
The cemetery, and Carlo's grave
Publicly visible«L'illustre storiografo riposa nell'umile cimitero» — the illustrious historian rests in the humble cemetery of his own village, wrote Il giovine Pensiero in January 1893. The grave is not humble. It is the largest thing in the yard. A stone screen wall with a cross on top and three panels set into it; rose-veined marble in the middle under fluted pilasters; a grey pedimented tablet either side, and in the peak of each pediment a carved shield under a five-pointed coronet; a broad flat slab in front with iron lifting rings over the vault. And over the centre panel, cut in relief, a serpent with its tail in its mouth.
- 2c
The parish church, and the parish archive
Ask permissionThe surname is first written in this village in the baptismal book of 1661. Elvis Orbanić's 2024 paper in Acta Histriae shows that the Gologorica parish archive exists and is being worked in.
At the doorAsk the parish — through the Pazin deanery if there is no resident priest — whether the pre-1800 books are at the church, at Pazin, or at the diocese, and whether the 1661 baptismal register survives.
- 2d
The village round
Publicly visibleThe Glagolitic shrine niche; the oval cartouche whose legend this archive has never read; the second set of arms cut in the cemetery a century after the first; the fortified core the Građevinar survey takes apart building by building; and the view north over the Čepić basin, which was a lake until it was drained in the 1930s and which is why this village sits where it sits.
Photograph these — we do not have them- The portal of 1711 — the inscription, close, in raking light. This archive has the tablet in a wide frame and has never read it word for word.
- The blasone on the façade, straight on and filling the frame — the arms Carlo blazons in his letter: a cross crossed by two arrows, a pomegranate beneath.
- The relief of Jesus on the portal, which the 2012 survey names and no photograph here shows.
- The oval cartouche in raking light, morning or late afternoon.
- The Glagolitic niche, with a scale in frame.
- Carlo's grave: each of the three panels separately, and the serpent in close-up.
- The modern Carlo memorial tablet, whole and legible.
- The loggia's two arches and the stone stair from the lane.
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- 3
Gračišće — houses 5, 19 and 24
Gologorica → Gračišće · 11 km · a full day
This is where the spine of this line actually runs. Gologorica is the grand cousin; Gračišće is the farmers and the stonecutters this family comes down from, and the book of souls gives their house numbers.
- 3a
The village, and the three houses
Publicly visibleHouse 5 — «Joan. Bapt. Defranceschi, agricola, natus 13. Augusti 1787 … obiit 14. Sept. 1846», with Francisca Salomon, born 17 March 1797, and seven children. House 19 — Antonius Defranceschi q. Joannis, scalpellino — stonecutter — and Maria née Fernasar, and their children, the eldest of them Antonius born 6 August 1856, who is the head of the chart the American cousins printed in 2012. House 24 — the household of the Status Animarum of 1925, and the house Maria Volhardt lived in. The numbers are still on the houses in villages like this. Finding which door is which is a morning's work and nobody has done it.
At the doorAt the općina or in the bar, ask whether the old house numbers survive and whether anyone holds a plan. «Esistono ancora i vecchi numeri civici? C'è una pianta del paese?»
- 3b
The Salamon palace on the square
Publicly visibleIrma Huić's study of the town — Prostor 23 (2015) — puts a palace of the Salamon facing the site of the bishop of Pedena's residence. And the wife of house 5 is Francisca Salamon. The family this line married into has a palace on the square and a stone in the cemetery.
- 3c
The parish church, and the bishop's palace
Publicly visibleGračišće was a residence of the bishops of Pedena — and the bishop of Pedena was the lord of Gologorica, on whose affitto fermo this family held the lease, collecting it rather than paying it, renewed by every bishop until the see was suppressed in 1788. Huić locates the palace by its wall and a parcel matching the footprint; the entrance to the bell tower survives and belonged to the same complex.
- 3d
The cemetery
Publicly visibleThree stones are already published here — a Defranceschi, a Salamon, and a Marfan — and the Salamon stone is what turns Francisca from a surname into a family still in the ground. Maria Volhardt's obelisk (6.IV.1867 – 3.X.1945) is the one this archive most wants photographed whole.
Photograph these — we do not have them- Maria Volhardt's obelisk, the whole inscription, straight on.
- Houses 5, 19 and 24, if the numbers can be matched — and the door lintels of each.
- The Salamon palace façade on the square.
- The surviving bell-tower entrance of the bishop's complex.
- The Defranceschi, Salamon and Marfan stones re-shot with the dates legible end to end.
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- 4
Pićan, and the ring around it
Gračišće → Pićan → Lindar → Beram → Sveti Petar u Šumi · 40 km · a full day
The lordship, the neighbours, and the two churches that explain what kind of country this was.
- 4a
Pićan — Pedena
Publicly visibleThe cathedral town of the bishops who owned Gologorica, styled «Dominus Gollaegoritiae, Scopliaci et Tupliaci». Every bishop from 1589 had to send Rome a sworn report on the state of the diocese, and Ivan Grah published the whole series in 1980. The see was suppressed in 1788. And Pićan is where Antonio Defranceschi was living in 1922 when he sailed for New York — «G. Pedena, Venezia», his wife Marta Defranceschi at Pedena 10 left behind him.
At the doorAsk for house number 10. And ask the parish whether its registers after 1918 are at the church or at Pazin — they would carry Marta, and whether Antonio came home.
- 4b
Lindar and Beram
Publicly visibleTwo of the county's other castle-villages, twenty minutes apart. Beram has the church of St Mary at Škrilinah with the Danse Macabre fresco of 1474 — the single best surviving image of what the world these registers describe believed about death.
- 4c
Sveti Petar u Šumi
Publicly visibleThe Pauline monastery whose chronicle of the miracles of the weeping Madonna Elvis Orbanić worked from in 2024 — and among its pilgrims, the parish priest of Gologorica. It is also the best-preserved cloister in inland Istria.
- 4d
Svetvinčenat — if you have the appetite
Publicly visibleAn hour south. Nineteen openings of its baptismal film have been read for this archive and the surname is in them from 1666 — Nadal, Anto, Mattio, Gasparo, Leonardo, and a Piero baptised twice. The castle Grimani and the great square are worth the drive on their own.
Photograph these — we do not have them- Pedena house number 10, if it still stands — Marta's address.
- The bishop's cathedral and any surviving episcopal arms at Pićan.
- Beram's Danse Macabre, for the archive's own use in explaining this world.
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- 5
The archive days
Rijeka · Pula · and, if you are serious, Zagreb and Trieste
Four institutions hold four different pieces of this family, and not one of them is in Istria's villages.
- 5a
Državni arhiv u Rijeci — the family's own fond
Book aheadHR-DARI-254, «Obitelj De Franceschi iz Gologorice», catalogue dates 1610–1934. This is the family archive itself. Its oldest item is the Glagolitic income book of the parish church of Hum, 1610–1685 — collected by the family, most probably by Carlo, not generated by it; the family's own earliest paper is 1703.
At the doorWrite ahead naming the fond. Ask for the inventory first, then order by item. And ask whether the bundle returned to the Naučna biblioteka at Pula in 1950 — three miscellanea fascicles — was ever reunited with it.
- 5b
Sveučilišna knjižnica Pula — Carlo's correspondence
Book aheadThe Collection of Old Books and Manuscripts at the university library holds Carlo De Franceschi's correspondence. This archive has published his letters to Giovanni Kobler from a printed edition of 1928; the manuscripts are another matter.
At the doorAsk for the correspondence by name and for any finding aid to it.
- 5c
Nacionalna i sveučilišna knjižnica, Zagreb — the library
Book ahead2,396 items of the family's book collection, catalogued between 2009 and 2021 and described in Libellarium 13/2 (2022). It came out of the house at Gologorica after 1945 and sat unprocessed for sixty years.
At the doorAsk for the catalogue export of the PDF signature range — the shelf list. It is one email and it would give this archive the whole library at once.
- 5d
Trieste — the cadastre and the visitation
Book aheadThe Catasto franceschino of 1820 is in the state archive at Trieste, and Dean Brhan's work in it prints six De Franceschi hearths at Moncalvo, one of them «Giobatta di Gallignana» — the only document that has ever put the two villages in one line. And the Diocesan Archives of Trieste hold de Buset's 1788 visitation of the Pićan diocese, parish by parish, published by Orbanić in 2016.
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Four doors, and what to say at them
The Italian is there to be read off a phone. It is plain and it is polite, and in this valley half of it will be answered in Friulian.
| Who | How | What to say | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whoever lives in the house at Gologorica | Knock. It is a home, not a monument. | Buon giorno. Sto ricostruendo la storia della famiglia De Franceschi, che ha costruito questa casa nel 1711. Posso fotografare il portale, l'iscrizione e lo stemma? | The three stones this archive has been arguing from for a year, photographed properly — and, if you are lucky, whatever the family who live there have been told about the house. |
| Državni arhiv u Pazinu | Write six weeks ahead. Bring identification. | Vorrei consultare gli Status Animarum di Gallignana e di Gologorica, e qualsiasi fondo intitolato alla famiglia De Franceschi. | The books of souls — house 5, house 19, house 24 — and the answer to whether DAPA has a De Franceschi fond of its own, which this archive has never established. |
| Državni arhiv u Rijeci | Write ahead, naming HR-DARI-254. | Molim inventar fonda HR-DARI-254, Obitelj De Franceschi iz Gologorice, i uvid u građu. | The family's own archive, 1610–1934. This is the single most important body of paper about this family anywhere, and nobody in it has read it. |
| The parish, Gologorica | Through the Pazin deanery if there is no resident priest. | Postoji li još matična knjiga krštenih iz 1661.? Gdje se čuva — u župi, u Pazinu ili u biskupiji? | Whether the register that first writes this surname in this village still exists, and where. |
What the trip is actually for
Three questions this archive cannot answer from a desk. Going is the only method left.
Does the Gologorica house join the Gračišće line?
Both families believe it does and neither has the page. The nearest thing is the 1820 cadastre at Trieste, where one of six De Franceschi hearths at Moncalvo is «Giobatta di Gallignana». Standing in both villages will not settle it; the Trieste cadastre and the Pazin books of souls might.
What does the 1711 inscription actually say?
Carlo says it records his great-great-grandfather building the house. The Građevinar survey says the portal carries arms, an inscription and a relief of Jesus. Nobody has published the words. One photograph in raking light ends a year of paraphrase.
Did Antonio come home to Pićan?
He is in no American record after April 1930 and he left a wife at Pedena 10. The Pićan registers and the Croatian civil records after 1930 would say. Neither has been looked at, and it is the largest unanswered question about the Eleven.
Everything to photograph, in one list
16 frames this archive does not have. Print it.
- Day 2The portal of 1711 — the inscription, close, in raking light. This archive has the tablet in a wide frame and has never read it word for word.
- Day 2The blasone on the façade, straight on and filling the frame — the arms Carlo blazons in his letter: a cross crossed by two arrows, a pomegranate beneath.
- Day 2The relief of Jesus on the portal, which the 2012 survey names and no photograph here shows.
- Day 2The oval cartouche in raking light, morning or late afternoon.
- Day 2The Glagolitic niche, with a scale in frame.
- Day 2Carlo's grave: each of the three panels separately, and the serpent in close-up.
- Day 2The modern Carlo memorial tablet, whole and legible.
- Day 2The loggia's two arches and the stone stair from the lane.
- Day 3Maria Volhardt's obelisk, the whole inscription, straight on.
- Day 3Houses 5, 19 and 24, if the numbers can be matched — and the door lintels of each.
- Day 3The Salamon palace façade on the square.
- Day 3The surviving bell-tower entrance of the bishop's complex.
- Day 3The Defranceschi, Salamon and Marfan stones re-shot with the dates legible end to end.
- Day 4Pedena house number 10, if it still stands — Marta's address.
- Day 4The bishop's cathedral and any surviving episcopal arms at Pićan.
- Day 4Beram's Danse Macabre, for the archive's own use in explaining this world.
- The house is lived in. Everything else on this itinerary is public; that is not. Ask, and take no for an answer.
- Photograph inscriptions in raking light — early or late, never at noon. Cut stone at midday is a blank.
- Write to the archives before you book the flight. Two of the four need weeks.
- Do not photograph recent graves with living relatives named. This site omits living people, and that starts in the churchyard.
- Record what you did not find. An empty shelf is a finding and this archive publishes those.
Sources for every claim on this page are on the Carnia line. Drive times and distances are approximate and were not measured on the ground; check the roads and the opening hours before you go. The other four itineraries →