CURZOLA (Slavonic, Earkar), a city of Dalmatia, Austria, the capital of an island of the same name in the Adriatic, which is situated between 42° 50' and 43° 1' N. lat. and 16° 40'and 17° 2θ' E. long, and has a length of about 25 miles, with an average breadth of 4 miles. The city is about 55 miles north of Ragusa. It is regularly built, and, besides the old cathedral, the loggia or council chambers, and the palace of its former Venetian governors, it possesses the noble mansion of the Arnieri, and other specimens of the domestic architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries, and still retains the massive walls and towers that were erected in 1420. Its principal industry is the building of the boats for which it is famed throughout the Adriatic. Originally, as it would seem, a Phoenician settlement, Curzola was afterwards colonized by Greeks from Cnidus; but nothing is known of its earlier history. The present name is a corruption of Corcyra Nigra, or Kεpκυpα M∈λaιva, the designation by which it was known to the Greeks and Romans. In 997 it came under the suzerainty of Venice, and it was one of the earliest cities in Dalmatia to receive municipal rights. In 1571 it defended itself so gallantly against the Turks under Uluch Ali of Algiers that it obtained the designation fidelissima. Population, 2200.