Living history tours took place this summer in Biograd na Moru, Croatia, to immerse new audiences in our stories.
Summer was the perfect time for guided interpretive walks, living history tours, legends, and tales. Biograd na Moru is a small city that is very much in touch with history. Living Biograd History tours were fun, concise, fascinating guided walks to help locals and visitors discover this amazing city. History wasn’t just something that happens behind glass cases in a museum, and this was a chance for the visitors to create history by themselves because, as an interpretive guide, I included them in the tours. Ten different interpretive living history costumed tours were held, featuring various characters throughout the summer season (from June to September). The Tourist Board of Biograd had just published a new brochure and book for children, The Legends of Biograd, which brought the local community and local school children into the project (they painted the illustrations for this book).
The idea to collaborate with the Tourist Board of Biograd during this summer was something that came to my mind since I enjoy creating different programmes for different tourist boards in Croatia as a tourist guide and interpreter. During another project at Easter time for the tourist board in Dugo Selo, the children, the teacher and the director from the tourist board of Biograd na Moru came as guests to make their presentation of this new picture book and I appeared on the stage as two different characters during their presentation – as Queen Jelena and as Banica Vilenica. While the legends were being read to the audience I acted out the characters when they were featured. I decided to be like the spice for the food, the first-hand experience for the guests of this city in their tourist programme during the summer period. So I created different tours, different actors and characters, and I offered them costumes – designed and constructed, created exclusively for this tour according to the book The Legends of Biograd.
This was not an easy project to ‘sell’ to the tourist board. Many locals even queried why I would deliver such a living history tour with costumes since they are more used to offering or experiencing a more traditional museum visit or guided tour. There is not even much of the physical history left to see, as walls have been destroyed or crumbled and there is nothing at the site of the king’s coronation, for example. Therefore, the visual references of what is described in the tour are not actually there for people to see. But, for me, this is why living history costumed tours can help bring the legends to life. I became determined to showcase how special this place is and help others to share in my own respect and love for the culture, heritage sites, and our history.
When the tourist board did agree to collaborate, I contacted a very famous and really talented dress maker, Melita Kukec, who I call ”the fairy of the dresses”. She took a pen and the paper and drew the whole dress according to the published book. At first, I thought how talented she was in making nice pictures, but then she managed to sew the complete costumes to look exactly like the childrens’ sketches of the characters! They were really something special and I knew this would help me bring the legends alive.
Five different characters became the host for the guests to Biograd during this summer period. Every time the story was different, a new character was the main leader of the tour, one main story was the focus and every time the route was different. It was challenging to tell the stories and legends on the site where the proofs disappeared since the Venetians and Ottomans completely destroyed this city several times over in the past.
The story of Biograd goes back to the 10th century when it was mentioned as a town and later it was also the official seat of Croatian kings and bishops. Its most notable time in history was marked by the coronation of the Croatian-Hungarian king Koloman in 1102. In the later periods (15th to the end of the 18th century) the city had to cope with destruction, given that it was a territorial part of the Republic of Venice, which was involved in continual wars with the Ottoman Empire.
A sunken Venetian ship from the 16th century tells historical details about the famous merchant ship that sank in 1583 and whose exact location was not known for more than 400 years. The treasure from the Venetian ship was accidentally discovered by fishermen from Murter in 1967. Today, more than 10,000 valuable objects are part of the ‘Cargo of a Sunken Vessel from the 16th century’ collection in the Homeland Museum of Biograd na Moru.
During some of the living history tours visitors had a chance to visit the museum, some of the tours took in a local liquor and wine tasting, some of them went searching for an interesting part of the story in the local cemetery. The bravest of our guests took part and also became living characters during the legend of Christmas eve of the King Petar Krešimir IV and they acted alongside me as the King, his servant, and a rich man. They loved it and asked if the tours would continue in 2025. Do you know that famous line spoken by Forrest Gump: ”Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get!”? Well, with this creative trainer and interpretive guide full of ideas, you never know what you can expect in the next project!
Ivana Zrilic is a mom, storyteller, interpretive guide, interpretive trainer, tourist guide, and owner of a private business, Zmaj Radionice (www.zmajradionice.com), for education and creating workshops for kids, officially working as an accountant in one company, but her creative part has to come out during successful collaborations with different institutions, tourist board, cities. She is passionate about heritage and interpretation. She can be contacted at: ivana_zrilic@yahoo.com
To cite this article: Zrilic, Ivana (2024) ‘The legends of Biograd came to life‘ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 3-2024, pg.17-18.
Available online: PDF-Newsletter_2024_3.pdf
