I must have learned about the arena in Pula when I was a little boy. Since then, I must have seen hundreds of photographs, drawings, and paintings of this wonder of Roman architecture and engineering. But every time I have been to the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula I have somehow managed to miss it. Until a couple of days ago, that is, when I had an evening of poetry reading in a gallery smack in the center of Pula. It was night already, and I saw the arena only fleetingly, from the moving car of a friend who graciously gave me a ride from Motovun. Bathing in a faint blue-green light, the arena mesmerized me at once. It was larger and taller than I thought it would be. Its curved flank struck me as ampler than I could have imagined it. And now I am dying to see it again. To walk around it. To touch it. To sniff it. To listen to it. Although bits and pieces of ancient Rome are still everywhere we cast our eyes, one rarely gets a chance to feel them with all the senses.