The Greeting to the Sun

The Greeting to the Sun (Croatian: Pozdrav suncu) is a monument set into the waterfront pavement at the western tip of the Zadar peninsula, at the entrance to the city's harbour. It was designed by Croatian architect Nikola Bašić and completed in 2008. By day it reads as little more than a wide glass disc underfoot; after sunset it becomes the most photographed object in Zadar.

Nikola Bašić and the Rebuilding of Zadar's Waterfront

The monument was the second half of an idea. Zadar's seafront had been rebuilt in plain concrete after heavy bombing in the Second World War, and Bašić was commissioned to turn that blank edge back into public space as part of the Nova Riva project. His first intervention was the Sea Organ, opened on 15 April 2005, in which broad white marble steps descending into the water conceal polyethylene tubes and resonating cavities; incoming Adriatic waves push air through them and the promenade plays a continuous, half-random chord. The Sea Organ shared the ex-aequo prize at the fourth European Prize for Urban Public Space in 2006. The Greeting to the Sun followed two years later a few dozen metres along the quay, so that the same stretch of waterfront speaks through sound and through light.

How the Installation Works

The installation is a circle 22 metres in diameter, made up of 300 multi-layered glass plates set flush with the stone paving, surrounded by smaller circles representing the planets, sized and spaced in proportion to the real solar system. Beneath the glass, photovoltaic solar modules collect sunlight during the day; after dark, that stored energy powers a light display beneath the plates. The system produces around 46,500 kWh a year, enough to cover roughly half of the energy used to light Zadar's waterfront, with the surplus fed into the grid. A chrome ring around the circle's edge is inscribed with the names of the patron saints of the churches on the Zadar peninsula and their feast days, along with data on the sun's declination through the year, from -23 to +23 degrees, and the corresponding length of daylight. Each planetary ring carries that body's name in Croatian and its astronomical symbol, so the pavement doubles as a calendar and a scale model.

What It Cost, and What It Costs to Keep

Construction cost around 8 million kunas (about 1.3 million euros) excluding VAT, rising to roughly 50 million kunas (about 7 million euros) once landscaping and related works were included. Exposure to sun, salt and moisture has made upkeep costly: maintenance between 2008 and 2013 alone came to about 700,000 kunas. Damage has been a recurring problem too. Glass and modules have cracked under vehicle weight, including a pickup truck of some 3,500 kilograms; four modules were destroyed in June 2009 and two more that August, and a hammer attack in May 2019 caused an estimated 90,000 euros of damage. A renovation and upgrade worth 4 million kunas was completed in March 2019, and the site is now watched by surveillance cameras and supervised around the clock.

The Zadar Sunset

The monument owes much of its fame to what happens above it rather than under it. The western tip of the peninsula looks straight down the Zadar Channel towards the islands, and the sunset here has been a local ritual for generations; the city's tourist literature has long repeated a remark attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, who is said to have visited in 1964 and rated Zadar's sunset finer than the one at Key West. Whether or not the quotation is exact, the crowd it describes is real: every clear evening people gather on the Riva, listen to the Sea Organ, watch the sun drop behind the islands and then stay on as the glass underfoot begins to glow. Zadar is a regular port of call for Adriatic charters, and many gulet cruises in Croatia call in here so guests can watch the sunset from this exact spot along the Riva.