Wandering Stone, the Streets of Old Izola, b Rick Harsch

Designed by Uruguayan-Slovene artist Francisco Tomsich, with 275 black and white photos by the German photographer Henrike von Dewitz, Wandering Stone is a unique tour of an old former island, developed mostly by the Venezians, and only as recent as the 1950s finally ceded by Italy to Yugoslavia, now a part of Slovenia. Izola was primarily a fishing village, and poor, surrounded by lush olive and vine land, on the surface quite typically Mediterranean/Venezian, yet near the crossroads of multiple migrations, near the irredental flashpoint of Trieste, governed by fascist Italy between the two World Wars, and long were its people looking to the Hapsburghs for relief from the taxes of La Serenissima. This book discusses the old island, attached to land in the 19th century, street by street, all included, and a history and culture emerge, along with an astonishing secret that not even the residents of Izola were aware of, involving espionage and Casanova and the fine art of barbering.