Bakar


Bakar is a town in the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County in western Croatia. The population of the town was 8,279 according to the 2011 Croatian census, including 1,473 in the titular settlement. Ninety percent of the population declared themselves Croats by ethnicity. The largest ethnic minority are the Serbs with 2.91% of the population. The old part of Bakar is situated on a hill overlooking the Bay of Bakar. "Bakar" is the Croatian word for copper.
Bakar is a port for bulk cargo and used to be known for its industrial complex that included a coke factory, which produced a considerable amount of pollution. Bakar's coke factory was closed in 1995 and the area's pollution has subsided significantly.

Demographics

Population of settlements in Bakar, 2011:
Bakar1,473
Hreljin2,206
Krasica1,353
Kukuljanovo905
Plosna44
Ponikve45
Praputnjak593
Škrljevo1,344
Zlobin316

Coat of arms

Bakar was granted its coat of arms and town privileges in 1799 by Empress Maria Theresa. The coat of arms was in the artistic style typical for the period, with a cartouche with large landscapes and ornamentation around the shield within a circular inscription.
The shield of the coat of arms features a red-and-white checkered top or "chief", with three local gray stone castles on green hills in the middle, and a black anchor on orange at the bottom.

Recognizable buildings

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Bakar was a district capital in the Modruš-Rijeka County of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia.

World War I

In February 1918 during WW I Gabriele D'Annunzio and Costanzo Ciano took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, naval raid on the harbour of Bakar, helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public.
After WWI, from the end of 1920, Bakar was one of the major points of entry of thousands of Russian refugees, arriving in the Kingdom of SHS following the end of the Russian Civil War in the European part of the former Russian Empire, mostly from Crimea, after the final defeat of White armies under general Wrangel there in November 1920.

World War II

During WW II, in Bakar was an Italian concentration camp, where civil population from Province of Ljubljana, as well as Croats and Serbs was interned. It the peak, there was 893 internees.

Trivia

In 1972 director Radley Metzger filmed his movie Score in Bakar, Croatia.