Pula mayor Boris Miletic on Friday decorated the James Joyce sculpture outside Ulysses cafe in the centre of the city with a red necktie to mark World Cravat Day and his deputy Robert Cvek did the same with the Matko Laginja bust in King Petar Kresimir IV Park.

This year World Cravat Day is again being marked under the city’s auspices with performances in Croatian and German organised by a local tourism school.

“Everyone in our country should be proud that Croatia is the homeland of the necktie,” Miletic said.

The cravat, the forerunner of the modern necktie, is a Croatian symbol, but also a symbol of Europe as a sign of some fundamental human values. Therefore Academia Croatica designated October 18 as Croatian and World Cravat Day.

On 18 October 2003, the biggest necktie in the world, 808 metres long and 25 metres wide, was placed around Pula’s Roman amphitheatre.