Beram

Beram is one of the oldest continuously populated settlements in Istria. Explorations of the prehistoric necropolis on the south slopes of Beram have shown with certainty that during the iron age a settlement already existed here.

A conical hill above a fertile valley was an ideal place for a hill-fort type settlement, surrounded by a simple rough wall following the terrain configuration. Over the ruins of these walls Roman forts and medieval castles were later built. A radial street pattern founded in some ancient times has been preserved in Beram untill today.

The Beram hill-fort of the first phase (untill the VIII.cent. BC) enclosed about thre same area the town includes today. Entrance is at a place that is still being used as an auxilliary entrance, and local people call it „the small gates“. Outside the hill-fort wall, at the southern hillside, was the necropolis – a place to burn and burrow the dead. As the hill-fort settlement was later spreading down the southern hillside the necropolis kept moving to be beyond the outside wall.

Beram - a medieval fort at the second line of defense of the Pazin principality
Beram was first mentioned in a written document in the year 911., in a deed of gift by king Berengar to the bishop of Trieste. In the middle ages it was fortified with defensive walls above which was rising, at the place where the parochial church stands today, a square watchtower, from which there was a secret undergroun passage leading to Jamorina cave next to the creek at the hillfoot. Although in parochial sense it belonged to Poreč diecese, Beram was part of the lands belonging to the counts of Gorizia, and later to Pazin principality, and it had a status of castle, and beginning with 1578. of a small town. During numerous armed conflicts between the Pazin principality, enclosing the central part of Istria with center in Pazin, and Venice, which reigned over neighbouring Motovun and the entire Istrian coast, the Beram castle played an important role, but due to that it also often suffered attacks and destruction.