What is the secret of the Istrian landscape, especially in the north-western interior of the peninsula, what makes it such a desirable Arcadia? Why does a citizen of Vicenza or Milan, Vienna or Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, London or Glasgow look for a bucolic haven here? The answer may be found in the harmonious balance of the natural and the artificial. It is about a cultural landscape where dry walls support terraces with olive trees or vineyards, where stone settlements are largely picturesquely, but also rationally situated into a slightly hilly landscape. Here, in the valleys there are still stone fountains – šterna, and groups of cypresses and chapels with bell towers on the tops of the hills will tell us in Loos’s sense – here lies someone buried.