St Nicholas Church & the Old Town

St Nicholas church was raised beside the castle in the middle ages and rebuilt across the Venetian and Austrian centuries into its present form, with a bell tower that anchors the town skyline. Pazin’s role as the administrative capital of Austrian Istria from the 19th century — the seat of the istarski sabor, the regional assembly — filled the old town with the schools, offices and railway station of a real capital, a function Venice-adjacent coastal towns never held.