| Senj’s Large Gate was erected in 1779 to commemorate the completion of one of the great engineering feats of the age, the so-called Jozefinska cesta or “Josephine Road”. Running over the mountains from Karlovac to Senj, the road was built by order of Habsburg Emperor Joseph II in order to open up the port of Senj to continental trade. Joseph himself visited the area to supervise the planning of the route, staying in Senj at the Vukasović Mansion (now home to the Town Museum). Begun in 1775, the road took three and a half years to build and required hundreds of locally-recruited labourers.
Marking the road’s final destination, the gate takes the form of a simple archway bearing the inscription Josephinae Finis, with distances marked in old German miles on the left-hand side of the portal. The German mile was a rather cumbersome unit of measurement adding up to roughly 7.5 of today’s kilometres – hence the distance from Vienna to Senj is marked here as 63 miles. |