coast

Split

Solin

Kaštela

Trogir

A Cultural and Historical Guide to the Coast of the Split-Dalmatia County

Omiš

Makarska
and the littoral

The A Cultural and Historical

Guide to the Coast of
the Split-Dalmatia County
COVER PHOTO: MARIO BRZIĆ
The COAST
Joško Belamarić

Split
Solin
Kaštela
Trogir
Omiš
Makarska
and the littoral

1
 The COAST

A Cultural and
Historical Guide
to the Coast of
the Split-Dalmatia
County

4 Obala

16 Split

44 Solin

52 Kaštela

62 Trogir

90 Omiš

98 Makarska
and the littoral

3
 Trogir, southern
waterfront THE COAST
A Cultural and Historical
Guide to the Coast of
the Split-Dalmatia County
The introduction to this little book should be read with cross-ref-
erences to those that were written on the first pages of two guides
published earlier, to the upland and the insular parts of Split and
Dalmatia County, bearing in mind of course that all three together
treat of just a part, even if the central part, of the wider whole of Dal-
matia. It consists of three different settings, with respect to physical
and human geography, in which the resistant highlander, and the
parsimonious islander live, meeting with the fickle city dweller in
the unique retort of civilisation that is comprised by the cities of
the coast.
The antique urban pattern even today defines the form of the his-
torical centres of the cities in Dalmatia (with Split, Trogir and Zadar
4
 being the classic cases). After the incursions of
the Avars and Slavs at the beginning of the 7th
century the area of Roman Dalmatia was re-
duced to the most immediate territories of the
towns: Jader (Zadar), Tragurium (Trogir) and
Split – the former Palace of Diocletian (to which
some of the municipal attributes of nearby but
ravaged Salona were transferred) – to Ragusium
(Dubrovnik) and Dekatera (Kotor) in the south,
and the islands of Arba (Rab), Apsorus (Osor)
and Curicum (Krk) in the Bay of Kvarner. They
were formally under the jurisdiction of the Byz-
antine emperors, up to the time when they were
annexed to Croatia by the kings Petar Krešimir
IV and Dmitar Zvonimir (†1089). After the
downfall of the Croatian native dynasty, in the
early 12th century the kingdom of Croatia and
Dalmatia was acquired, as a legal and political
unit, by the Hungarian Árpád dynasty, and later
Split, a capital on the Peristyle by the Angevins.
5
 Egnazio Danti, La Galleria delle carte geografiche in the Vatican (1572-85)
6 – detail with a depiction of Dalmatia
7
 Omiš, Early Croatian Some of the most important pages of early Croatian history were
chapel of St Peter
– Sv. Petar na Priku
indited in the area of coastal and highland Dalmatia, as shown by
the many extant monuments, particularly churches with their ample
stone furnishings as a whole ornamented with the characteristic in-
terlacing decoration (9th-11th century) and the medieval fortresses
and cities (12th-15th century) that were erected by the notable Croa-
tian aristocratic lines: the Šubić, Frankopan, Talovac and Nelipić,
the Berislavić, Kačić and Dražojević families – from Nin to Knin,
between the rivers Zrmanja and Krka, from the spring of the Cetina
to its mouth, deep into Zagora on the way to Bosnia. We can find
the most distinct phenomenon of Early Croatian art in the dozens
of chapels with their characteristic handling of the ground plan and
their altar screens, as a rule with dedicatory inscriptions in Latin.
The figure of King Krešimir IV (1058-1074) on a throne from the
pluteus of an early Romanesque altar screen from Split Cathedral
(turned into a font in the 13th century) has with justice attracted great
attention in scholarly writing. This was at the same time the first
crowned Croatian king who successfully fought for real jurisdiction
over the Dalmatian cities. One should nevertheless point out that
it was Duke Branimir who, in May 879, became the first Croatian
ruler of Dalmatia, setting it free for the first time from Frankish and
8
 Byzantine suzerainty, receiving for this politi-
cal project the spiritual protection of Pope John
VIII. During his time, the Slavonic mass was
introduced in the church in Croatia.
The borders of Dalmatia with the inland region
expanded and contracted during the Middle
Ages. Ladislas of Naples sold the province in
1409 to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats (all
except Dubrovnik and its territory). The thin
line of the coast with its necklace of a handful of
towns, and yet with the long island zone, gradu-
ally, during several centuries, would be trans-
formed politically and then ethnically, splitting
off from the home core that was once the centre
of Croatian statehood – from Knin, Sinj, Imots-
ki, Klis and the Makarska littoral, and of course
from Ravni Kotari and Nin. Partially at the end
of the 15th and partially in the beginning of the
Old altar of St Domnius
16th century, this core was under the rule of the
in Split Cathedral Ottomans.
9
 Vaulting of the Included into the Venetian Stato da Mar between 1409 and 1420,
Temple of Jupiter in
Diocletian’s Palace
the Dalmatian towns found themselves in a powerful, excellently
organised Mediterranean state then at its apogee. In the period of
the peace of Venice, which lasted until about 1470, that is until the
first major Turkish inroads, the foundations for a distinctive variety
of Renaissance art and literature were laid in Dalmatia. Croatian
Renaissance culture is markedly polyglot. Latin was the language of
learned writing and writing with any pretensions, the instrument of
scholarship and diplomacy; Italian enabled all the benefits of com-
munication in commerce and law; Croatian was the language that
was most apt in the search for immediate and emotionally charged
expression, whether in affective verses, nuptial comedy or devotional
homily. The inevitable osmosis among these language worlds often
gives a marked note of originality to a number of works of Humanist
writers who appeared in all the Adriatic milieus. Highly important
works of Renaissance art, architecture and sculpture came into be-
ing along the coast. In all the cities of that time genuine Human-
ist republics were formed. The best among them also marked the
development of art in other centres, in the interior, in Hungary and
Italy, where they were known as the Schiavoni, i.e. the Croats, like
the architect Luciano and the sculptor Franjo Vranjanin-Laurana,
10
 Ivan Duknović and the painters Juraj Čulinović,
Andrija Medulić (Andrea Meldola), Julije Klović,
Federiko Benković, and others.
But as early as the 16th century, Dalmatia lay
under daily threats from the Turkish Empire.
Around 1550, incursions, looting and military
operations had reduced Dalmatia to a population
of 100,000. The broad rim of the space around
Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, Split and Kotor turned in
the Baroque period into a costly mechanism of
terraplains, fosses, platforms, pointed bastions,
tenailles. After the capture of Klis, the Vene-
tian Senate heard the proposal that it should be
knocked down, just as part of the Salona am-
phitheatre had been knocked down, with many
smaller fortifications – so that the Turks should
not set up camp in them – and it was even heard
that the rampart of Diocletian’s Palace should be
demolished (when most of the perimeter towers
Trogir, Niccolò di Giovanni, statue of had already gone). At the same time, the am-
St Sebastian in the church of the same name phitheatre of Salona would be used as an open
11
 L. F. Cassas, quarry for the construction of Sta Mara delle Salute in Venice. In
Split port with
lazarettos (1782) Dalmatia, the centuries after the 1500s were years of overall stagna-
tion. It was also the time, however, of the quiet building of a number
of small but correspondingly graceful little towns and villages.
E. Vidović, As a result of the Treaty of Campoformio in 1797, all the Venetian
Split Port possessions in the Adriatic went to Austria, and after the wartime
turbulence of the early 19th century, Austria linked this unit with
Dubrovnik into the province of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, in 1822
though extracting Krk, Cres, Lošinj and the province of Istria, leav-
ing Dalmatia only Rab. Together with the eastern Adriatic coast,
Croatia was part of a Habsburg commonwealth that was supposed
before World War I to have been transformed into a confederation
to an extent recalling the EU of today. Slightly more elegant, how-
ever. The period of 104 years under Austrian rule, particularly in
the golden years of the boom in Dalmatian wines in the second half
of the 19th century, is characterised by a gradual strengthening of
economic and cultural life, reflected still in all the island ports, the
roads, the cadastre, and a multitude of only speciously modest resi-
dential heritage features.
12
 The economic base consisted primarily of agri-
culture. A great tradition was related to the cul-
tivation of olives and, even more so, of the vine.
At the beginning of the 2nd century BC the Greek
historian and geographer Agatharhid wrote that
there was no better wine in the world than that
of Issa (Vis). On the wave of emigration in the
first decades of the 20th century, emigrants from
Hvar and Pelješac became pioneers of viticulture
in California; recent analyses have shown that
the first vines of the celebrated Zinfandel actu-
ally came from Kaštela.
Of equal importance perhaps were fishing and
ship building. For a long time the only open
sea fishermen in the Mediterranean, the men of
Komiža, for example, had on the island of Vis,
around Dalmatia and the Mediterranean, as well
as on the Atlantic coast of Spain, 15 factories for
processing such fish as the sardine and ancho-
Olive press in Split’s vy. There are a number of other characteristic
Ethnographic Museum types of Dalmatian craft (at the beginning was
13
 Salona, Early the famed Roman liburna, clearly borrowed from the Dalmatian
Christian basilica at
Manastirine
Liburnians), the form of which was elaborated by a centuries-long
tradition of naval architecture. During the whole of Antiquity, there
were working quarries between Splitska and Škrip on Brač and over
Trogir, depiction of
March on the Seget near Trogir. The excellent stone enabled the creation of a
Radovan Portal string of brilliant buildings, not always of monumental dimensions,
from the Early Christian and Early Croatian, as well as of the Re-
naissance and Baroque ages, to the ebullient 19th and 20th century
when all around Dalmatia the feeling for grace in the architectural
composition and building of even the most modest houses was still
preserved. The 1900s were also the period when for the first time
the scholarly study of the Early Christian Salona was addressed, of
Diocletian’s Palace, of St Donat’s in Zadar, Early Croatian architec-
ture, Radovan’s Portal in Trogir, Šibenik Cathedral. In a dozen years
or so, Split and Dalmatia county will be able to boast of a dozen sites
and cultural phenomena inscribed on that UNESCO list. The Croa-
tian coast is known for its very important urban units: Dubrovnik,
Split and Trogir are all on the UNESCO World Heritage List, as is
Šibenik Cathedral and, recently, Stari Grad on Hvar together with
the Stari Grad Plain, as well as several important components of the
intangible heritage – the Hvar Procession with the Cross; lace mak-

14
ing in Pag and Hvar; the Feast of St Blaise in Du-
brovnik; on the Temptation list are Salona with
the aqueduct of Diocletian and the Brač quar-
ries, Veliki and Mali Ston, Korčula, Hvar and
the Zadar episcopal complex with the Roman
forum; then there is the chivalric sport Alka of
Sinj, the kolo or round dance of Vrlika... Even
apart from these monuments, there are hun-
dreds of no less valuable monumental complexes
and units that make a suggestive framework to a
particular manner of everyday life that has en-
chanted, and still enchants. We are dealing with
an assemblage of cultural circumstances that are
often still experienced as a personal discovery,
and that will soon be integrated as a special and
distinctive contribution in the universal history
of European civilisation.

Fra Bone Razmilović, miniature from a psalter

(Museum of the Franciscan Monastery at Poljud.
15
16
Split
Split

17
Split

E. Hébrard, theoretical
reconstruction of SPLIT
Diocletian’s Palace
(1912) Diocletian’s Palace and the
historical nucleus
The historical core of Split with the palace of Diocletian was among
the first urban units to get into the list of the world heritage of UNES-
CO (1979). Becoming ten-fold bigger during the last century, to-
day Split touches the very edges of its natural theatre. It is located,
organic city centre as it is, on the coast of central Dalmatia; off the
coast stretch important islands (Brač, Hvar and Vis) and in the back-
ground the karst poljes of Dalmatinska Zagora and western Bosnia.
In the hinterland rise the mountains, divided by Klis canyon between
Mosor (1340 m) and Kozjak (780 m), on which there are considerable
strata of marly limestone that at the end of the 19th century became
the mainstay of the cement industry. With this started industrial de-
velopment, which in the past few decades took off with ship building,
steel works and the polyvinyl industry, all today subject to radical
economic and ecological re-examination. The whole of the industrial
production was pushed into the rear of the town – even if into areas
of absolute cultural, historical and landscape values – enabling the
city to create in the port what is probably the most appealing pas-
18
 Split
Arcades of the
Peristyle of
Diocletian’s Palace

19
Split

senger traffic terminal and the best preserved historical port in the
Mediterranean. Even today the mood of the harbour is conveyed
into the very city by the old Split fish market in which the fishermen
sell on their counters what they caught the night before, as at the city
produce market fruit and vegetables are vended that were picked in
Sphinx the suburban fields and gardens the previous afternoon.
on the Peristyle
The city is also an important university centre, as well as the seat of a
number of scientific and cultural institutions. Split natives are par-
ticularly fond of telling of their sporting prowess, in football, bas-
ketball, tennis, sailing, with a number of stars like Goran Ivanišević,
Wimbledon champion, basketball star Toni Kukoč, mountain
climber Stipe Božić. In spite of its deep rooting in history and the
expected traditionalism, today’s Split shows a practically brash mo-
dernity in a number of events from culture and entertainment. It is
an inexhaustible nursery of the most important figures on the Croa-
tian rock scene, as well as of fashion and opera. There are not many
places where so much attention is devoted to style of dress, entirely
in line with the famed elegance and beauty of the town’s youth. This
is all abetted by a life that the whole year long is lived in the town’s
exteriors, on the many squares and little piazzas, on the waterfront,
under clement skies.
20
Split

21
Split

J. Marasović, theoretical reconstruction of temples

22 in the central part of Diocletian’s Palace (1998)
Split

23
Split

Aida on
the Peristyle
History
the city developed from the palace to which Emperor Diocletian re-
tired after his abdication on May 1, 305. Split acquired the attributes
of city after the fall of nearby Salona, capital of Dalmatia of Antiquity,
Portrait of Diocletian’s round about AD 640. From 1105 on Split acknowledged the sover-
wife Prisca in the
imperial mausoleum
eignty of the Croatian-Hungarian kings, obtaining autonomy on the
basis of the old municipal rights. Gargano de Arscindis of Ancona
(1239-1242), at the time when Croatian-Hungarian King Bela IV had
to seek refuge in Split and Trogir in the face of the Tartar invasion,
organised government in the city along the lines of contemporary
Italian towns. When it came under Venetian rule in 1420, the period
of the autonomous commune came to an end. Renaissance literature
was characterised by a powerful Humanist activity with the begin-
nings of art literature in Croatian, in which particular prominence
was assumed by the circle around Marko Marulić, “father of Croatian
literature”.
At the end of the 16th century the city became the main export har-
bour in the Balkans. The square of Diocletian’s walls wreathed with a
string of towers developed into a hoop of medieval and Renaissance
ramparts. The ramparts attained their final form in the middle of the
17th century in the Baroque star of the characteristic Vauban bastion
system. The beginning of the 19th century was marked by a brief but
24
 Gaius Aurelius Valerius
Diocletianus (ca 243 – 316) is the
Latinised version of Diocles, the
Greek name of a simple soldier, by
birth from the immediate vicinity
of the then capital of the Roman
province of Dalmatia, Salona. He was
proclaimed emperor on November
20, 284. In order to bring order to
Gaul and prevent the appearance
of usurpers, he appointed his
friend Maximianus co-ruler and
surrendered the western part of the
empire to his rule. In 293 the two
of them took as new joint rulers
Galerius and Constantius Chlorus,
thus establishing a tetrarchy. It
might be said that Diocletian is to
be credited with the Empire having
survived, in the east at least. Indeed,
in most divisions of Roman history
it is considered that Late Antiquity
began with him.
Diocletian secured the state borders,
executed a new territorial division of
the Empire, separated military from
civilian rule, reorganising the internal Split
organisation of the army and the
structure of the state bureaucracy
and also put the financial, monetary
and tax systems in order. Although
at first he was tolerant of Christianity,
in 303 he issued an edict banning
it, which led to many executions,
property confiscations, demolitions
of churches. He abdicated on May
1, 305, and withdrew to his palace
near Salona, capital of the Roman
province of Dalmatia. Two Roman
writers record the answer that
Diocletian gave in Carnuntum (a
place in the suburbs of Vienna) to
his heirs who in 308 asked him to
return to the throne: “Oh, if you saw
the cabbage that I planted around
the palace with my own hands
you wouldn’t pester me with such
offers”. Croatian Humanists of the
Renaissance and Baroque periods
(Koriolan Cipiko, Petar Hektorović,
Jerolim Kavanjin and many others),
Portrait endeavoured to imitate Diocletian,
of Diocletian in whose abdication and retirement
from Nicomedia from the confusion of the world they
(Istanbul, Archaeological Museum) saw an ideal example.
25
Split

R. Adam, Elevation very active period of French rule. The defensive walls were in part
of Diocletian’s torn down, and city gardens were created. At the time of Austrian
Palace (1764)
rule, the neo-Renaissance Prokurative was put up, and Diocletian’s
Aqueduct from the source of the Jadro to the city was renovated.
Diocletian’s Palace, started in 298, is one of the most important
works of the architecture of Late Antiquity, not only because of the
degree of preservation of original parts and the whole, but also be-
cause of the string of original architectural forms that announce the
new Early Christian, Byzantine and early medieval art. In its inte-
rior and exterior it represents a blend of luxurious imperial villa and
armed camp, with two blocks serving as factories in the northern
half. It is rectangularly shaped, about 215 x 180 m, with two broad
streets shaded by porticoes crossing at right angles (the Cardo and
the Decumanus), which lead from the centre of the palace to all four
gates, one in the middle of each side of the rectangle. In the north-
ern part of the palace was once the Gynaeceum Iovense Dalmatiae
– Aspalatho (mentioned in Notitia Dignitatum, the administrative
document of about AD 400), a factory for the making of luxurious
robes for the emperor, the imperial family and consistory, the govern-
ment administration and the army. The southern part was residential
in the strict sense – the emperor’s chambers and halls. The halls of
the residential quarter were connected on the first floor with a long
portico, the Cryptoportico, with 42 wide open arcades and three log-
26
 Diocletian’s Substructures.
Through a little door that in the
Renaissance was called Porta Aenea,
the Brazen Door, which was used
for the imperial approach to ships,
one enters into the “cellars”, actually,
the ground floor halls the function
of which was to raise the level of
the areas of the imperial abode on
the upper floor. The substructures
of the palace enable us, because
of their structural elements, in the
mind at least to reconstruct the
appearance of the upper chambers,
and to understand the original
function of some of them. Some
of the substructure was used in
the early Middle Ages for living in,
and in one room parts of a press
for the production of oil have been
found. Through the medieval
centuries, however, it was turned
into a vast waste pit of the houses
that had fragmented the original
structure of the residential part Split
of the palace. The substructure of
gias, which provide a fine view of the sea and the Diocletian’s Palace, together with
archipelago. the perimeter defensive walls and
outstandingly well-preserved cult
The palace was originally fortified with sixteen centre, represents probably the best
towers built on the land-facing elevations, while
that towards the south – articulated with monu-
mental arcades and loggias – rose over the re-
cently archaeologically discovered and excavated
harbour complex. Three grand land gates are de-
fended with pairs of octagonal towers.
The main streets meet in the centre of the palace.
South of them, in the prolongation of the Cardo,
is an open space, the Peristyle, framed on east and
west with monumental columns and arches, di-
rected to the Prothyron and the Vestibule, of the
imperial residence. To the east is the Diocletian
Mausoleum. The external octagon of the Mauso-
leum was girt with a portico on 24 columns. On
the cornice that runs between the first and second preserved Antique complex of this
row of columns in the interior are relief depic- kind, visible in almost all its original
volume. With their preservation and
tions of funeral symbols. There is particular in- typological diversity the substructure
terest in two medallions in which archaeologists rooms constitute the most complete
have identified the portraits of Emperor Diocle- compendium of Late Antiquity
ground plan approaches.
tian and his consort Prisca. The dome of the Mau-
27
Split

soleum was built by laying brick in the form of fan patterns, arranged
into circles in the last third of the dome.
In the axis of the mausoleum in the western sacred space there is an
excellently preserved rectangular temple with a stone coffered ceil-
ing consecrated to Jupiter. In the same space, on both sides of the
Chapel of St Martin approach to the Temple of Jupiter the foundations of two circular-
in the Golden Gate ground-plan shrines have been found; these, according to one Re-
naissance description, were dedicated to Cybele and – in the north
– to Venus.
As early as the 5th/6th century, a church dedicated to St Martin was
incorporated into the narrow sentry passage over the Golden Gate.
The altar screen is from the Early Croat period (11th century), when a
belfry was built over the little church, one like that still preserved in
the West Gate.
In front of the northern elevation, in 1069 the Convent of St Benedict
or St Euphemia was put up; it was closed down at the time of the
French rule at the beginning of the 19th century. Apart from archaeo-
logical remains of an early Romanesque basilica, only the Chapel of
the Blessed Arnir, built by George of Dalmatia (Juraj Dalmatinac)
in 1444, has remained. Close by is the monumental bronze statue of
Gregory of Nin, which (originally for the Peristyle) was done in 1929
by Ivan Meštrović. Gregory of Nin, Bishop of Nin from the early
28
 Feast of St Domnius, patron saint
of the city, May 7. It was upon
the legend of St Domnius being
a disciple of St Peter that the Split
church, from the early Middle Ages,
founded the claim to its apostolic
origin. The theory probably starts
with the first archbishop of Split,
John, who came from Ravenna,
from the city that considers its own
patron, St Apollinare, born according
to tradition in Syria, whence came
Domnius too, to have been a disciple
of Peter. It was only Msgr Frane
Bulić, the founder of contemporary
Croatian national archaeology,
who was able to prove that in fact
Domnius lived at the end of the 3rd
and beginning of the 4th century.
The likeness of Domnius is presented
first of all on a mosaic in the
baptistery of the Roman Cathedral
of St John Lateran. Bonino da Milano
put up a ciborium in his honour
with altar and sarcophagus in 1427,
whence in 1770 his relics were
transferred to a new altar made by Split
G. M. Morlaiter. His likeness is to be
seen on Split medieval coins and
chapter seals; scenes from his life are
described by a painting of P. Ferrari
in the cathedral choir (1683-85). We
shall find it on choir stalls and on a
relief over the northern entry into the
bell tower of the cathedral in Split. A
representation of St Domnius with
a model of Split in his hand painted
by Girolamo da Santacroce on the
polyptych in the Franciscan church
in Poljud is particularly worthwhile.
A medieval Statute of 1313 ordered
that the feast of St Domnius was to
be celebrated. During the feast of
St Domnius, a day which is called in
Split Sudamja, lavish church rituals
and processions were carried out,
competitions, plays, tombola was
played, weddings negotiated. This
was always the busiest trading day
of the year, when salesmen arrived
in town from all quarters. It was the
beginning of the summer season the
day of the first ice cream, cherries
and broad beans. Sudamja is being
reinvigorated. It will be the day of
G. da Santacroce, Split on the palm of the official beginning of the tourist
St Domnius’ hand, 1549 (Monastic church, Poljud) season.
29
Split

Prokurative 10th century, fought for the use of the Slavonic language in liturgical
service in Croatia.
Over the internal sentry passage in the Iron Gate, over the one-time
Decumanus, a church dedicated to St Theodorus (patron of the Byz-
antine military) was put up as early as the 5th/6th century. It was re-
Meštrović’s statue modelled in 1088/89, when a bell tower was put up, the oldest intact
of Gregory of Nin
such structure on the Croatian shores of the Adriatic.
The main city square (Platea Sancti Laurentii mentioned for the first
time in 1255) is shaped in the new part of the city outside the western
walls of the palace. It opened up into the current shape in 1821 after
the demolition of the complex of the late Gothic (15th century) Rec-
tor’s Palace, council chamber and theatre, with gaol in the ground
floor, on its north west side. Only the city loggia is extant, under the
building of the former council chamber. Just in front of the West
Gate of Diocletian’s Palace is a complex of palaces with a Romanesque
tower that bears a clock from the 15th century and the loggia of the city
watch (today a pharmacy) rebuilt in the Baroque period. Opposite is
the late Romanesque palace of rector (chief magistrate) of Korčula,
Ćubrijan Žaninić (Ciprian de Ciprianis), a feudal magnate of Bosnian
king Tvrtko, with its picturesque corner six-mullion windows on the
first floor and the statue of St Anthony the Abbot (1394).
30
 Marko Marulić is the central figure
of the Split literary Renaissance. No
longer than a year after his death
(1524), Hvar Humanist Vinko Pribojević
labelled Marulić one of the key
strongholds of the Croatian literary
heritage: Marko was “the second lamp
of our language”, after St Jerome, who
was then respected not only for his
Dalmatian origin but also because of
the conviction that he had founded
Glagolitic script, a particular feature of
medieval Croatian writing, and the use
of the Slavic vernacular in the mass.
Contemporaries in his homeland were
particularly affected by his Judita, the
first book printed in Croatian. Marulić
himself was aware that his position
in the national literary culture was
equivalent to that played by Dante in
Split
Italian. He achieved European fame
for his Latin works, though, which
went through dozens of editions, in
Portugal, England, Poland, Germany,
Belgium, France and Italy. These
were real best-sellers of the time. His
Institutions and Evangelistary were
read by SS. Francis Xavier and Ignatius
Loyola, writers of picaresque novels
like Quevedo as well as the heretic
Henry VIII, who left his comments on
the margins of Marulić’s writing.
Three poetic traditions intersect
in Marulić’s work – Latin, Italian
and Croatian, as well as an
interest in painting, sculpture,
archaeology, numismatics,
epigraphs, historiography, philology,
encyclopaedias. This admirer of
Erasmus was in Split a friend of Toma
Nigris Mrčić, Humanist and diplomat,
whose portrait, painted by Lorenzo
Lotto, the best Venetian portrait
artist of the 16th century, is kept in
the Poljud monastery, along with the
books that Marulić left him in his will.
In the last few years Marulić studies
have achieved an outstanding level of
development, including the printing of
Meštrović’s statue of Marko Marulić his collected works.
31
Split

Western part of Voćni trg (Fruit square) is dominated by the remains of the city cas-
Split port below tello put up in the 15th century. The northern side of the square is
Marjan
closed off by the Milesi Palace of the 17th century. Erected in front
of the southern elevation of this palace is Meštrović’s monument to
Romanesque Marko Marulić, the father of Croatian literature (1450-1524), whose
two-mullion Latin works went through several tens of European editions in their
window, palace by
Golden Gate
time. The best among the more recent city squares is that one closed
with a complex of neo-Renaissance buildings called, after the Vene-
tian, the Prokurative, put up on the site of the earlier Baroque forti-
fications.
Among the medieval houses put up on the site of the antique porti-
coes of the Cardo, the De Augubio Palace draws particular attention;
it was named after a trader who moved in during the 15th century
from Italy’s Gubbio and is particularly interesting for the courtyard
portal carved by the workshop of George of Dalmatia. In nearby
Žarkova ulica is the Papalić Family Palace (now home of the Munici-
pal Museum), a set of buildings that were drawn into an integrated
unit by a plan of George of Dalmatia in the middle of the 15th century.
The courtyard with its richly decorated portal and loggia stands out
for the beauty of the architectural execution, as does the large room
on the first floor with its grand four-mullion window and its reno-
vated wooden ceiling.
In the centre of the Franciscan monastery on the coast, which in the
20th century had its one-time appearance radically altered, lies an ear-
32
 Marjan
Split and Marjan Hill live in an
inseparable physical and symbolic
symbiosis, and many have held that
the views from the peaks of Marjan
motivated the actual construction of
Diocletian’s Palace. In the perception
of Split natives, this hill, with its peak
at 183 m, has for centuries been
a magic mountain. In medieval
documents it is called Kyrieleison
or Mons Golgota, which, with all
the little churches and hermitages
on it, tells of the sanctity that it has
always had for the town. The steps
over the Romanesque church of St
Nicholas above the lookout point
and the Jewish cemetery (which
has been here since the end of the
16th century) lead to the first peak
of Marjan, where the Zoo is, while
the route to the west takes you past
new lookout points all the way to
the hermitage of St Jerome (second
half of the 15th century). Thence one
heads down to Cape Marjan to the
Romanesque church of St George
erected on the site of a one-time
Split
ancient shrine consecrated to Diana.
ly Gothic cloister of the first half of the 14th cen-
In the church of St Jerome lies a
tury. Inside the church are the graves of known stone Renaissance altar with a
Split personalities such as historian Thomas the depiction of Saint in his hermit study,
Archdeacon (1200-1258), writer Marko Marulić with reliefs of St John the Baptist and
(1450-1534), composer Ivan Lukačić (1587- St Anthony the Hermit at the sides,
carved in 1480 by Andrija Aleši. Over
1648), poet Jerolim Kavanjin (1643-1714). The the door of the church, the words
most important artwork is the painted crucifix of of St Jerome are to be read: Mihi
Blaž Jurjev of Trogir of the early 15th century. oppidum carcer, solitudo paradisus
est – To me the city is a dungeon,
Alongside the northern elevation of St Fran- solitude is bliss.
cis’ Church the way rises towards picturesque The cultural, historical and scientific
Varoš, on the slopes of the hill called Marjan, institutions around Marjan create a
where, in the intertwining streets, there are still whole system. Here are: the very rich
a large number of characteristic houses of Split Museum of Croatian Archaeological
Monuments; two galleries of
commoners, farmers and fishermen. As for the Meštrović, which are a real fragment
churches, particular attention is merited by the of an ordered universe in the city in
early Romanesque St Nicholas’ (early 12th cen- which the pulse of modern urban
tury). From the first Marjan Vidilica (lookout), development beats almost wildly;
the onetime villa of Marechal Tito,
in front of the Jewish Cemetery, there is an un- which could be like Brijuni below
forgettable view of Split and surrounds. Marjan Marjan; the Mediterranean Institute
is the haunt of Split poets, artist and couples in for Life Sciences, which confirms
love, particularly so since the 19th century, when that Split is not only a city of the
past, but of an exciting future; the
it began to be afforested. Oceanographic Institute at the
extreme south western point.
33
Split

Cathedral. By an irony of history, the mausoleum of the most fer-

vent persecutor of the Christians was to be transformed, not later
than the 5th century, into a cathedral of their faith. The cathedral
in Split is the mother church from which, in the early Middle Ages,
started the conversion of the whole of the Croatian hinterland. The
archbishop of Split, the metropolitan, bore the title primas Dalma-
Pulpit (1257) tiae et totius Croatiae, primate of Dalmatia and the whole of Croatia,
which was given specious credence by the legend of the patron of
Split St Domnius being a disciple of St Peter. In the middle of the 13th
century they began to build the campanile of the cathedral on the
site of the Prostasis. For its slenderness and airiness, for its gradated
attenuation towards the top, and for the very idea of placing columns
at the corners of a weighty building just where it ought to have been
the strongest, there is no analogy to it on the coast of the Adriatic.
Between 1890 and 1908 it was thoroughly restored with several al-
terations to the original appearance, especially in the concluding
floor. The time of the beginning of the building is revealed by a
now-vanished inscription of 1257 that mentions Kolafisa, widow of
Split rector Ivan Frankopan, as donatrix of the bell tower, while local
tradition also ascribes to her the merit of having put up the pulpit
in the cathedral.
Over the main portal there is a little sarcophagus, that of two Hun-
garian princesses, daughters of King Bela IV; the little girls died of
34
 Split
the plague in Klis in 1242. The cathedral’s art-
works include the door, carved out of walnut
wood in 1214 by Split artist Andrija Buvina. The
right side altar of the cathedral was dedicated to
St Domnius. The altar ciborium under which
the figure of the saint on a sarcophagus can be
seen was put up by Bonino da Milano in 1427.
The altar under the ciborium of the joint patron
of Split, Solin martyr Anastasius (known as
Staš), a dyer from Aquileia who came to Salona
only to be hurled into the Jadro River with a mill-
stone around his neck, was done in 1448 by the
best Croatian master builder and sculptor of his
time Juraj Matejev – George of Dalmatia (from
Zadar by descent), architect of famed Šibenik
Cathedral and a number of other monuments on
both coasts of the Adriatic. In the early 17th cen-
tury the space of the cathedral was expanded by
Archbishop Markantun de Dominis by the addi-
tion of a new choir, taking away the wall behind
the high altar. Also preserved here are two long
Choir stalls (mid-13th century) backs of choir stalls close to the Buvina style.
35
Split

Baroque In the Treasury of the Cathedral over the sacristy the Evangelistary
high altar of St Domnius is kept (second half of the 6th century), the oldest
manuscript written on parchment extant in Croatia, which arrived
in Split together with the relics of St Domnius from Solin. Also here
are other medieval codices, precious archival documents, the manu-
script of Toma the Archdeacon (obiit 1268) Historia Salonitana,
many relics, a silver altarpiece from the altar of St Domnius of the
first half of the 14th century.
Baptistery. In the 13th century a font composed of slabs of the al-
tar screen (of the second half of the 11th century) that originally lay
in the cathedral was put up in the baptistery. On one of the slabs
the Croatian King Krešimir IV is represented, the earliest depiction
of a European king in medieval stone sculpture. The shape of the
coffered vaulting of the temple had an impact on Dalmatian early
Renaissance architecture, best manifested in Aleši’s baptistery in
Trogir (1450-1467) and the Chapel of the Blessed John, which was
put up in the Trogir cathedral by Niccolò di Giovanni according to
a contract of 1468.

36
 Split
Bell tower of the Petar Krešimir IV
cathedral on pluteus built
into the baptismal font

Door of Andrija Buvina (1214)

37
 The Archaeological Museum in Split,
founded in 1820, is the oldest museum
in Croatia. The building of the institution
was put up in 1912-1914. It has a fine
collection of archaeological items from
prehistory, from the time of the Greek
colonisation of the Adriatic, the Roman,
the Early Christian period, and the early
Middle Ages. The monuments on the
whole come from central Dalmatia, mostly
indeed from Salona. The Archaeological
Museum is bound up with the beginnings
of archaeological studies in Croatia, and
its world renown – confirmed by the most
recent excavations and publications – were
won for it by its long-term director Frane
Bulić, especially after the holding of the 1st
International Congress for Early Christian
Split

Sarcophagus with depiction of the Good Shepherd Archaeology (Solin – Split, 1894).

The Museum of Croatian Archaeological

Monuments was founded in Knin in 1893.
After World War II it was moved to Split,
and since 1976 it has been in its current
building. The museum has a fine collection
of early medieval stone monuments, as
well as collections of arms, tools, jewellery,
coins, and everyday use items. Particularly
important are its epigraphic monuments
from the 9th to the 12th century, on
which we can find the names of Croatian
kings and princes and other worthies,
constituting a rich stone archive that is rare
for the Europe of that time. The finds from
the Early Croat graves provide abundant
material for the study of economic, cultural
and political life of the Croatian people in
the early Middle Ages.

Grating from the church of

38 King Zvonimir in Biskupija near Knin
 Gallery of Fine Arts. This was founded
in 1931. There is a permanent exhibition
of paintings and sculptures from the 14th
century to the most recent times. There
are occasional exhibitions of contemporary
artists. Their high artistic values pick
out the works of Andrija Aleši and Juraj
Ćulinović of the 15th century, Andrija
Medulić of the 16th, Matteo Ponzoni-
Pončun and Federico Benković of the 17th,
and pictures of Venetians masters. The
gallery exhibits valuable icons from the
15th to the 19th century. Most numerous
are works of some important Croatian
artists (Bukovac, Medović, Dešković,
Meštrović, Vidović and Job). Recently, the
Gallery of Fine Arts obtained for its home
the premises of the Old Hospital in front
of the northern wall of Diocletian’s Palace,
becoming the core of one of the leading
A. Aleši, relief with depiction of St Jerome
gallery centres in Croatia. Split

Split Municipal Museum was founded

in 1946. It is located in the north east part
of Diocletian’s Palace, in the complex of
medieval buildings among which a central
place is occupied by the late Gothic palace
of the Papalić family, plan and execution
by the master builder and sculptor George
of Dalmatia and his circle of carvers and
builders (around 1450). In the interior,
in the permanent display, a slice of the
city’s history is shown, of the period of
the autonomous city commune (12th-14th
centuries), where the city Statutes, coats
of arms and coins are highlighted, and
Romanesque sculpture from the cathedral
bell tower. The period of Venetian rule
is also shown (15th-18th century), where
the central place belongs to the literary
group around Marko Marulić. Also highly
worth pointing out are the Libro d’Oro and
the Gothic-Renaissance chests. Weapons
used in battles for the defence of Split are
on show.
After thoroughgoing several-years long
restoration work in the Museum complex,
in the renewed display, an important place
was obtained by collections of Split burger
culture of the last two centuries.
George of Dalmatia,
portal of the Papalić Palace 39
 Facade of the villa of
Ivan Meštrović
Split

Ethnographic Museum. Founded in 1910

within the building of the old commune
council chamber; since 2000 it has worked
within the restored complex of the one-
time convent of St Clare in the south east
quadrant of Diocletian’s Palace, which has
an outstanding stratigraphy of styles. In a
number of collections full of abstruse artefacts
the ethnography of the whole of Dalmatia is
represented, particularly the most typical folk
costumes of the whole area, some of which
stand out for their richness of needlework
(those from Ravni Kotari, Knin, Vrlika, Imotski,
Poljica). Others are characterised by their
whitework (from Sinj, Dalmatinska Zagora) or
by their lace (Primošten, Novigrad and Pag).
Various artisan crafts are displayed –
potting, knitting and various handicrafts –
woodcarving, wool processing, leather sandal
making and so on). A representation of the
basic forms of making a living is also given, as
well as of various instruments, silver jewellery
and types of weapons.

40 Clothing of a woman from Varoš, mid-19th century

 Split
Meštrović Gallery. The gallery was set up
with a deed of gift of Ivan Meštrović, the
most important Croatian sculptor of the
20th century, an artist who made ripples
Europe-wide, and who in the last decades
of his life lived in the USA. It was opened
in 1952, in a building that was put up by
Meštrović between 1931 and 1939 to a
plan of his own. It was a combination of
residential rooms, halls for the display of
artworks, and studios for artistic work. The
artist lived there himself until World War
II. In the gardens, bronze sculptures are on
show. Inside, artworks of marble, stone,
wood, bronze, oil paintings and various
drawings are kept. Some of the artworks
are shown in Meštrović’s Kaštelet, the
former summer villa of the old Split family,
Kavanjin-Capogrosso, of the17th century.

Working as a separate part of the museum

is the Gallery of Paintings of Emanuel
Vidović, the most prominent Split artist
of the 20th century, in a Classicist house
alongside the Silver Gate of Diocletian’s
Palace.

Vidović’s studio 41
Vranjic

E. Vidović,
View of Vranjic Vranjic
(Archaeological
Museum) Once a quiet little island, in the Roman times it was part of the port
of Salona. From that time many fragments built into the houses of
the village have been preserved. In the Middle Ages Vranjic is men-
tioned as island with castello and as the property of the Archbishop
of Split, but it was considerably damaged in the Turko-Venetian
wars. From the second half of the 17th century it was settled by
people from the highlands, mainly from Drniš. The Parish Church
of St Martin was renovated in 1729, rebuilt in 1915 and 1928, at
which time it was decorated with the very worthwhile frescoes of
Jozo Kljaković and Vjekoslav Parać. Half a century ago it was still a
draw for excursions from Split and the eye of the painter (Emanuel
Vidović made five views of Vranjic); today, it is lost in a more or less
industrial environment.

Spoliae from
Antiquity on a house in Vranjic
42
 Vranjic

Parish Church of St Martin 43

44
Solin
Solin

45
Solin

Complex of Early
Christian basilicas SOLIN
with baptistery
In prehistoric times a handful of settlements developed on the foot-
hills of Kozjak and Mosor on the site of today’s Solin around the
L.F. Cassas, river mouth, rather wide considering the short course of the Jadro
Diocletian’s Aqueduct River. In Roman, early-Imperial times, they coagulated into a city
at Dujmovača (1782) that in the first historical documents is given in singular and plu-
ral forms – as Salona and as Salonae. Salona was also a stronghold
and port of the Illyrian Delmati, who from early on had been in the
Greek sphere of influence in the Adriatic. Immediately after Roman
domination had been established over the whole of the eastern Adri-
atic, Salona became the main emporium for the extensive interior
occupied by the Delmati. Because of its loyalty to Caesar during
the Civil Wars, Salona was elevated by his nephew Octavian, later
Augustus, to the honour of an independent Roman colony – colonia
Martia Julia Salonae (between 43 and 30 BC). As early as the time
of Emperor Tiberius, the governor, Publius Cornelius Dolabella (AD
14-20) set out from Salona no fewer than five radiating roads to the
interior of the province that, after helping the military and admin-
istrative consolidation of Roman rule over the newly-won expanses,
became prime economic and cultural factors. Salona became the
centre of the whole of the province of Dalmatia, and the cosmopoli-
tan centre of the Adriatic. It underwent its true flourishing in the
46
 Solin
time of Diocletian, when it obtained the honor-
ary title of Valeria, which was the emperor’s own
gentile name. From the 4th to the 6th century it
became an important centre of Christianity, but
fell under the onslaught of the Avars and the
Slavs a little before 640.
From the first Roman phase, part of a tract of city
walls is preserved, complete with a monumental
gate called the Porta Caesarea with a tripartite
entry space flanked by octagonal towers. The city
spread rapidly to the west and east and in the 2nd
century was girt with new city walls. The forum,
70 metres times 45, was located in the centre of
town, near the sea. In Diocletian’s time, when
new temples (the last pagan shrines) were going
up in Salona, factories were being built (a weap-
ons factory), then the complex of capitol and the-
atre was remodelled.
Tyche of Salona (early 4th century) In the north west corner of the city at the begin-
ning of the 2nd century an amphitheatre was put
up as part of the development of the western
walls of Salona. It is possible to reconstruct its
47
Solin

Sarcophagus with original appearance precisely. The auditorium had room for 13,400
depiction of Hippolytus seated and could altogether receive about 20,000 spectators (a little
and Phaedra
(Split, Archaeological more than the amphitheatre in Pula).
Museum) In the eastern part of the city in the 4th century the basilica urbana
Theoretical was put up, and then in the 5th century a new one, considerably
reconstruction of Early larger. A baptistery was built alongside it with the solemn hall for
Christian cathedral the preparation of the catechumens, candidates for baptism. In the
6th century a new basilica with a cruciform plan was built contigu-
ously with the original, forming the characteristic complex of twin
basilicas (geminate). They were linked by the narthex, and the whole
complex was organically linked with the episcopal palace.
There are eight more basilicas, by far the most complex being in Ma-
nastirine. On the architrave of the main door the following inscrip-
tion is carved: Our God, be favourable to the state of Rome (Deus
nostrem propitius esto rei publicae Romanae), clearly a direct echo of
the long crisis at the waning of Antiquity. In the crypt of the private
mausoleum of the pious matron Asklepia and her husband at the
necropolis in Marusinac, St Anastasius was interred; a dyer from
Aquileia, martyred during the reign of Diocletian in Salona in 304,
he was the joint patron of Split.
On the occasion of the holding of the First Early Christian Archaeol-
ogy Conference in 1894, Msgr Frane Bulić had a memorial collection
48
 Solin

Complex of Early Christian basilicas 49

Solin

Theoretical and work space of the archaeological museum built in Salona itself.
reconstruction He gave the name Tusculum to the building, after the famed villa of
of the baptistery
Cicero by Rome. Under the cypresses on the western edge of Mana-
stirine Msgr Frane’s own sarcophagus is placed, with its inscription
that he himself composed while still in the prime of his life, inspired
by the Salona Christian inscriptions: Hoc in tumulo iacet Franciscus
Bulić... servans reverenda limina sanctorum - In this grave lies Frane
Bulić... guarding the honoured remains of the saints.
Early Croatian Solin developed along the Jadro River to the east of
the ruins of Salona. Churches raised by the Croatian kings have
been excavated: the churches of St Mary and St Stephen of the Island,
where in 1898 a famed tablet with an inscription of Queen Jelena
(Helen) was found (she died in 976) and the “Hollow Church”, or
coronation church of King Zvonimir (11th century).

V. Bukovac, Portrait of
Msgr Frane Bulić
50
 Gravestone of Queen Jelena.
On August 26, 1898, at 11 in the
morning, all the church bells rang
out, announcing that archaeologist
Msgr Frane Bulić had uncovered a
gravestone of Queen Jelena in the
ruins of her endowment, the church
of St Mary on Gospin otok [Our Lady’s
Island] in Solin, where the royal
mausoleum was. Putting together
the inscription from tiny fragments of Solin
a ruined sarcophagus, Bulić managed
to reconstruct the whole of the
wording, which ran as follows:
IN THIS GRAVE REPOSES FAMED
JELENA, WIFE OF KING MIHAJLO II,
MOTHER OF KING STEPHEN, WHO
WAS QUEEN. ON OCTOBER 8 SHE
DIED. HERE SHE WAS INTERRED IN
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 967, SHE
WHO IN HER LIFE TIME WAS MOTHER
TO THE KINGDOM BECAME MOTHER
OF THE POOR AND PROTECTRESS OF
WIDOWS. LOOKING THIS WAY, OH
MAN, SAY: GOD, HAVE MERCY ON
HER SOUL.
The inscription is a particularly
important primary historical source
on the basis of which the genealogy
of the Croatian kings of the 10th
century was established.

Gospa od Otoka/Our Lady of the Island 51

52
Kaštela
Kaštela

53
Kaštela

Kaštel Novi and

Kaštel Štafilić KAŠTELA
Kaštela – this is a collective name for seven settlements that devel-
oped alongside the Renaissance castellos on the coast between Solin
and Trogir, bound to the fields below Mt Kozjak. They were built, of
course, not only for the sake of protecting the peasants from surprise
attacks by the Ottomans or the pirates, but also so that the owners
should enjoy in them “the beauties of the spring”. A large part of the
Kaštela plain belonged in the ancient period to the ager of Salona; the
part around Siculi, above today’s Resnik nearby the airport, at the
time of Emperor Claudius (AD 46) was assigned to some veterans by
the process called centuriation. In the mid-7th century, it was colo-
nised by the Croats, forming a number of villages below Kozjak, and
the royal courts of the Trpimir dynasty in Bijaći, Solin and Klis.
The first castello, Sućurac, was built by Archbishop of Split A. Gualdo
in 1392; it was expanded by B. Averoldi in 1488 and B. Zane in 1510.
The new parish church holds the arch of the altar screen with an in-
scription from the Early Croatian age. Alongside the older settlement
on the hill is the chapel of St George of Putalj, a foundation of Duke
Mislav (around 835-845), given to the church of Split by his son Duke
Tripimir with a famous deed of gift of March 4, 852. Around, a large
medieval necropolis has been excavated; burials took place in it up to
the 16th century, when the cemetery of Kaštel Sućurac was moved to
54
 Kaštela
the late Gothic church of Our Lady of Dilat (Na
Hladih) where the miraculous icon of the Virgin,
work of the workshop of Dujam Vušković of the
mid-15th century, is revered.
Kaštel Gomilica was put up on the island of
Gomile in 1529 by the Split Benedictine nuns,
alongside the estate given them in 1078 by King
Zvonimir. The Romanesque church of SS. Cos-
mas and Damian was consecrated in 1160 over
the remains of a villa of Antiquity and an Early
Christian basilica. In St Jerome’s, the parish
church, there is a wooden crucifix, the work of Fra
Fulgentius Bakotić (mid 18th-century), and some
paintings of Gaspare Diziani.
Kaštel Kambelovac was also originally sur-
rounded by the sea; it was put up in 1478 by the
Split Cambi family. In the middle of the settle-
Theoretical reconstruction of ment is their tower and palace with a fine Renais-
Kaštel Vitturi-Lukšić sance balcony.
Kaštel Lukšić was begun by the Vitturi of Tro-
gir in 1487, and the brothers Jakov and Jerolim
remodelled it from the ground up in 1563, as can
be read in the Latin inscription along the gallery
55
Kaštela

over the picturesque courtyard. It was renovated in 2001 for the lively
Local History Museum of Kaštela and for the Library.
The old parish church of the Assumption was from 1515, while the
new church is from the 1800s. In the 19th century it had transferred
to it the altar of the blessed Arnir, work of George of Dalmatia of
Entry into Kaštel 1448 from the church of the Split Benedictine convent in front of the
Vitturi-Lukšić Golden Gate. The relief with the stoning of the Bishop of Split Arnir
(1180) on the saint’s sarcophagus is a classic piece of early Renaissance
sculpture.
Hard by is Kaštel Rušinac (1482), with an ivy-wreathed chapel in
which lies the grave of Miljenko and Dobrila, Croatian Romeo and
Juliet. There is a nice arboretum alongside the elementary school.
Kaštel Stari. It was put up in 1476 (and renovated after a 1492 fire) by
Trogir Humanist Koriolan Cipiko (see below Trogir), thus preceding
so many of the Trogir patricians who built and renovated their villa-
castles on the coast that reminded travel writers of the Lago di Garda.
Koriolan tended his garden with his own hands, and local Baroque
writers tended to compare him with Diocletian who, according to the
lore, was also keen on horticulture. The inscription on the castello
says that it was built ex manubiis Asiaticis, with booty from Asian
quarters, where Koriolan served as admiral in the Venetian navy.
Brce, the picturesque village square in front of the castello, is domi-
nated, particularly in the summer, by a giant silver linden planted
56
 Kaštela

Cambi family castello 57

Kaštela

Kaštel Novi only in 1952 on the site of ancient elms that survived in the gardens
east of the town until they withered and died practically overnight
just after the catastrophe in Chernobyl.
Over the village is the pre-Romanesque Church of St George on Ra-
Theoretical dun, and at the peak of Kozjak, high over the village, is the chapel of
reconstruction
of the castello of St John of Biranj (12th century; renovated in 1444), to which all Kaštela
Pavao Cipiko makes a pilgrimage on the feast of St John the Baptist, June 24.
Kaštel Novi was built in 1512 by Pavao Cipiko. The Renaissance cha-
pel of St Roch comes from 1586, the city loggia and clock tower from
the 18th century, and the bell tower alongside the Parish Church of
St Peter was put up in the mid-19th century, probably to drawings by
Vicko Andrić.
Kaštel Štafilić was built in 1508 on an islet by Trogir patrician Stjepan
Štafilić. In the 18th century, Ignacije Macanović had the parish church
constructed. Close by is the unfinished tower called Nehaj, originally
owned by the Trogir Lodi family, and later by the Split Papalićes.
In Resnik lagoon the remains of a Hellenistic port and a Roman set-
tlement have been excavated. Close by, Siculi is being sought; this was
a colony founded in the time of Emperor Claudius for some veterans,
which went on with the role that in the pre-Roman period was played
by the coastal emporium of the population gathered around the im-
portant hill fort settlement of on Nofar or Veliki Bijaći 2 km above
the coast. Bijaći is one of the occasional courts of the Croatian native
58
 Kaštela

Early Croatian Church of St George [sv. Juraj na Radunu] 59

Kaštela

princes, with remains of the three-nave basilica of St Martha, built on

the foundations of an Antique building. Duke Trpimir issued a docu-
ment in Bijaći that is considered the first Croatian diplomatic docu-
ment. Uncovered stone and marble fragments with opulent interlaced
furnishing (from several phases from the 9th to the 11th century) are
on exhibition in the Split Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monu-
ments.

Ciborium from St Martha’s, Bijaći

60
 Pantan. Three kilometres to the
east of Trogir at a place that was
called Blato [Mud] in the Middle
Ages, but later Pantan (Latin palus
= mud, Italian pantano – slough), is
a complex of fortified Renaissance
mills, at the site of earlier medieval
and perhaps even Antique mills. The
apparently untouched landscape
was actually modelled by the human
hand: pools with sluices, water
channels, an access route from the
north and a channel for boats that
tied up alongside the quay in front
of the mills have all been made
artificially. Fishponds were also
created, and the sources mention salt
pans. In the same place were four
mills that were put up “on royal land”
by Trogir patrician Teodor Vitturi, with
the consent of Croatian-Hungarian
king Ludovic II, which he obtained
Kaštela
thanks to the intercession of famed
Trogir man and Croatian governor
Peter Berislavić.
The interior of the mills is divided
into three parts, of which the central,
inside the tower, is vaulted low
with a broken ceiling. The tower
had a number of loopholes and a
drawbridge on the entry from the
sea. Along the northern wall in
the interior of the building, eight
millstones are built in, with wooden
hoppers for grain above them.
The water comes in from a nearby
disappearing river spring, at the
foot of Krban Hill, which is stored
and regulated with a dike in a “lake”
north of the mill building.
During World War II the mills were
burned and bombarded. In 1958
they were structurally repaired. In
September 1991 the Yugoslav air
force rocketed the western part,
the roof and the southern facade
with pier, but the whole complex
has been recently restored. In 2001,
Pantan, with its fortified Renaissance
mills, was proclaimed a special bird
and fish reserve.
Biblical garden of the shrine of
Our Lady of Stomorija in the plain over Kaštel Novi 61
62
Trogir
Trogir

63
Trogir

TROGIR
Trogir is an amphibian city, so old that its foundations – Illyrian,
Hellenistic and Roman, under the current medieval versions – liter-
ally grow up out of the Adriatic. The space of the prehistoric settle-
ment was more or less the same as that of historical Tragurion, which
was an island, or an island connected to the mainland with a narrow
isthmus. Finds go back to 2000 BC. After 219 BC (the end of the
Second Illyrian War) it became an important entrepôt port of the
Issa or Vis community. A Greek inscription incorporated into the
courtyard of the Benedictine nuns alongside the south door men-
tions the magistrates of the parent colony of Issa that governed the
filial colonies on the land. The grid of streets and residential blocks
(insulae with a ratio of 1:2.5) of the central part of the city show all
the perpendicularity typical of Greek urban planning.
In the 1st century BC it is mentioned as oppidum civium Romano-
rum. In the small Cipiko palace on the main square a paving that
once belonged to the agora/forum has been found. Around Trogir a
centuriation unit separate from the Salona ager has been preserved,
showing the later limitation. This is connected with Pliny’s report
that Emperor Claudius sent his veterans to the place called Siculi (to-
day’s Resnik by Trogir). The same writer says that Trogir was mar-
64
 Trogir
more notum - noted for its marble, a fine stone
that because of the ease with which it would take
modelling and the gold colour it got from polish-
ing was found in all the more important decora-
tive parts of Diocletian’s Palace (the Gold Gate,
the portals of the imperial mausoleum and the
temple of Jupiter), and also in Radovan’s Portal
and the sculptures of Duknović.
Trogir survived the Avar-Slav assaults and de-
struction through the first half of the 7th cen-
tury with a few other Antique settlements on the
mainland (Zadar, Split, Kotor), emancipating it-
self after the destruction of Salona to become an
independent civitas. The Croatian princes and
kings occasionally stayed in Trogir, residing in
nearby Bijaći. The most eloquent Trogir monu-
ment of that time is the little basilica of St Mar-
tin (or St Barbara) on the main cardo, behind the
city loggia on the square.
After the downfall of the independent Croa-
tian state, Koloman of the Árpád dynasty was
crowned king of Croatia in Biograd in 1102;
65
Trogir

Fedor Karačaj, view a crucial role in his peaceful assumption of power in Croatia and
of Trogir from the cities on the coast was played by Bishop of Trogir John (died
the west, ca 1830
in 1111), whom Trogir, for the many miracles that he performed,
was afterwards to celebrated as blessed and patron of the town. The
Middle Ages was a time of genuine self-confidence and reference to
the town’s own historical line, of ancient roots of course. The com-
Kamerlengo Castello mune signed a treaty of alliance with Ancona (1236 and also in 1415)
invoking the common ancient origins. Antiquity, as alter ego, is seen
in the construction of Trogir Cathedral and the palaces in the town,
just as much as it clearly refers to the bell tower in Split.
In the Middle Ages, the people of Trogir chose as their rectors feu-
dal magnates of the Croats, mainly from the mighty clan of the
Šubić family (the famed epitaph of Duke Mladen Šubić of 1348 in
the cathedral called him the shield of the Croats – clipeus Croato-
rum). After the Treaty of Zadar in 1358 the city was an important
point on the Angevin meridian that ran from Naples via Hungary
to the Baltic. In June 1420 the Venetian fleet took Trogir, one of the
last cities that had not wanted to surrender to Venice after it had in
1409 bought Dalmatia from Ladislav of Naples for 100,000 ducats.
A bombardment lasted for several days, and there were many dead,
many demolished houses and palaces, damaged towers, damaged
walls. One of the first acts of the new Venetian Major Council in
Trogir related to the ban on the official use of the Croatian language,
66
 Trogir
on May 22, 1426. The Council ordered that no
language but Italian or Latin could be spoken in
the city. On the other hand, it was in Venetian
Dalmatia (and of course in the Ragusan Repub-
lic separately) that Croatian vernacular Renais-
sance literature was born at that time, which in
Dalmatia itself was considerably more important
than that written in the Italian. Not by chance,
it is precisely in Trogir that the most important
anthology of Croatian writings of the 15th and
16th century has been preserved: the manuscript
compilation of Petar Lucić called Vartal (Gar-
den) made for the use of the nuns of the convent
of St Nicholas. A genuine Humanist republic was
formed in the town in the Renaissance, with a
whole galaxy of names, among which that of
Koriolan Cipiko stands out (1425-1493). Not far
from the city, for the safety of his serfs and for
his own pleasing country life, he built a castello
(Kaštel Stari), the first in a string around Trogir.
Petar Cipico, Koriolan’s father (died in 1440), a
collector of monuments and codices, was “one of
the first archaeologists of Humanist Europe” (T.
Bell towers of St John the
Baptist’s and the cathedral 67
Trogir

Trogir, Mommsen). It has been hypothesised that it was Petar who in 1423
southern copied out a fragment of Petronius, the famed Trimalchio’s Feast. A
waterfront
number of other Trogir Humanists might be mentioned too, from
the Andreis, Lucić, Sobota, Berislavić, Štafilić, Dragač and Kvarko
families. Ivan Lucić is with good reason held the father of Croatian
Statue of St John historiography.
over the city gate In the second half of the 13th and throughout the 14th century what
was called Brogo-Varoš (Pasike) was built onto the oval ring of the
Romanesque city, a reflection of the original geological form of the
low islet on which Trogir is formed. At the time of the Angevins, the
last quarter of the 14th century (and up to 1417), Varoš was girt with
walls and fortified with towers. In the mid-15th century the con-
struction of the great castello called Kamerlengo (after camerlengo,
the rector’s chancellor) on the south west corner was completed.
A particularly interesting approach was the making of a road via
which, from the mainland, over a bridge, through the space between
the walls of the Renaissance bulwark and the other city ramparts (on
the line of today’s road) it was possible to cross over the bridge to the
island of Čiovo without entering into the town, around the eastern
part of it. In 1646, the old bridge to the mainland was knocked down
and a new moving bridge was built; the barbicans were reinforced,
broad platforms and Baroque bastions to the north were built. Dur-
ing the period of French rule at the beginning of the 19th century they
68
 Trogir

Kamerlengo Castello 69
Trogir

Council Chamber, started a “sanitary demolition” of the city walls; this was continued
Church of St during the time of Austrian rule, which was particularly aimed at
Sebastian and loggia
on the main square regulating the Foša (earlier, a much wider channel between city and
mainland) because of the sedimentation of mud.
There were a number of city gates in the walls. Over the northern
land gate is a statue of the Blessed John (1430s). The southern, mari-
Vitturi Tower
time gate, in a Mannerist style, is the work of the workshop of the
Bokanićes (1593). The original wooden door studded with huge
nails is preserved. By it is the loggia that was used for those who
were late after the evening closing of the gate (and afterwards, for a
fish market). Also still to be found in the medieval city wall onto the
south are the Vitturi Tower, part of the Benedictine convent of St
Nicholas, and St Nicholas’ Tower, west of the maritime gate.
The main city square. The programme of designing the appearance
of the main city square in Trogir, at the site of the Roman forum,
started in the 1300s with the construction of the commune’s loggia
and the council chamber. The square acquired its final shape in a
number of operations in the mid-15th century, at a time when the city
really was renovated. The interior court of the commune building
had the features of the late Gothic style, with a staircase that, accord-
ing to tradition, was made by Matej Gojković, master builder of the
bell-tower in the 1420s. It was remodelled by Niccolò di Giovanni
70
 Trogir
the Florentine in the 1480s, and then by Tripun
Bokanić (up to 1608). Many patrician coats of
arms are built into the walls of the municipal
council chamber.
St Sebastian with city clock tower. At the time
of the dreadful plague of 1465/66, which brought
2000 dead, it was decided that in future the feast
of St Sebastian would be celebrated. In 1476
the vow of the city was fulfilled and, to a plan
by Niccolò di Giovanni, a church started to be
built, located in the earlier atrium of the hexafoil
church of St Mary. The construction was com-
pleted by 1482. The Renaissance altar with a stat-
ue of St Sebastian was partially reconstructed,
which, like the statue of the saint on the facade,
was the work of Niccolò, while the statue of the
Redeemer might be the work of Aleši. The inte-
rior was recently arranged as a memorial space
for the defenders of Trogir who fell in the recent
Homeland War.
The city loggia was originally at the level of the
square, and was linked with the hexafoil Early
Northern city gate 71
Trogir

Niccolò di Giovanni, Croatian church of St Mary (presented archaeologically in the fore-

Altar of Justice
court of the Pinacotheque). Among the remodelled late Antiquity
capitals that crown a number of recycled columns, only a corner,
late Romanesque, basket capital can be distinguished. The Altar of
Justice is the masterpiece of Niccolò di Giovanni (inaugurated on
Statue of St John of November 15, 1471), which raised the paving of the loggia, turning
Trogir in the loggia into a rather grand judicial tribune. Tripun Bokanić carved a new
judicial table (1606) and set up a new rail for the loggia with balus-
ters. A relief with an equestrian likeness of Croatian Ban and Bishop
Petar Berislavić was carved by Ivan Meštrović in 1938.
St. Barbara’s (originally dedicated to St Martin). A little three-nave
basilica built in the 11th century via the remodelling of an earlier
church, as told by an inscription on an architrave of an altar screen,
mentioning Petar and his wife Dobrica. It was long deconsecrated,
up to its renovation in 1931 and in the 1980s.
The Small Cipiko Palace. Opposite the Basilica of St Martin or St
Barbara. Over the steps in the courtyard of the Small Cipiko palace
in Trogir, on which Niccolò di Giovanni worked after the 1470s, is a
relief with a portrait of Alvise Cipiko, son of Koriolan, laurelled poet
and later a high ranking prelate. The facade of the palace onto the
square was restored by Ignacije Macanović.
72
 Trogir
The Large Cipiko Palace. Father and son, Petar
and Koriolan Cipiko, managed, clearly according
to a certain family programme and with strategic
marriages, to occupy the whole western side of
the main square with their two palaces – opposite
the council chamber, the cathedral and the other
public buildings – furnishing them with an un-
common number of family coats of arms, clearly
with princely pretensions. The southern portal,
Niccolò di Giovanni, angel on the
with medallions of angels bearing Koriolan’s
southern portal of the Cipiko Palace motto Nosce te Ipsum (Know thyself) is the work
of Niccolò, around 1470. The northern portal, op-
Three-mullioned windows of posite the portal of the cathedral, is the work of
Andrija Aleši over the main entrance
into the Cipiko Palace Ivan Duknović (early 1480s), fitted into this place,
however, with the Aleši three-mullion windows
(turned into balcony apertures) in the mid 17th
century after the palace complex had been divided
between two brothers and restored after devasta-
tion by the Venetian militia that used the palace as
a barracks during the Cyprus War. The premises
of the palace are today used by the Music School,
some of the city departments, the Conservation
department and part is privately owned.
73
Trogir

Lunette of the Cathedral. During structural repairs to the foundations of the bell
Radovan Portal tower in 1903, an altar consecrated to Hera was found, which might
(1240)
well warrant the assumption that there was once, on the site of to-
day’s cathedral, a shrine from at least the Greek and Roman period.
The new foundations of St Lawrence’ Cathedral were blessed at the
beginning of the 13th century, after the old cathedral had been ru-
Pulpit (ca 1257) ined in the Venetian destruction of the city in 1171.
The Romanesque cathedral was conceived as a three-nave basilica
with a main nave considerably wider and higher than the side naves
(or aisles). In the lunette of the southern door is an inscription of
1213, mentioning Bishop Treguan “of Tuscan line” and city rector
Ilija, probably of the Kačić family.
A bell tower started in the second half of the 13th century rises over
the forecourt of the cathedral. Still, the bell tower that we see today
was created in the renovation of the whole cathedral complex, se-
verely damaged in the bombardment of the city in June 1420. The
works on the first floor were run by Matija Gojković and Master Stje-
pan, father of the sculptor Ivan Duknović. The second floor has all
the stylistic features of Venetian Gotico fiorito, while the last floor of
all with its pyramid was completed in 1603 by Tripun Bokanić .
Over the central part of the central nave hangs a large crucifix by
Blaž Jurjev of Trogir (restored in 2001 to the place for which it was
74
Bell tower of cathedral

Trogir

75
Trogir

Niccolò di originally painted). It stands high over the entrance into the presby-
Giovanni, putto tery the choir stalls of which were carved in 1439 by Ivan Budislavić,
on a frieze in the
baptistery which completed the several-decades-long campaign to remodel the
interior of the cathedral after the bombardment by the Venetian fleet
Andrija Aleši, St
in 1420.
Jerome in lunette of The northern arch of the early Gothic forecourt and the passage
the baptistery
through it is closed by the baptistery, which was built by Andrija
Aleši with help from Niccolò di Giovanni of Florence (1460-1467).
The baptistery is a characteristic example of the synthesis of late
Gothic and early Renaissance stylistic features, also drawing upon
the characteristic coffered vaulting of the Split baptistery (the one-
time temple of Jupiter).
On the northern side, with a vow from Nikica Sobota, the Chapel of
St Jerome (Jerolim) was built in 1438-1446; master builders Nikola
Račić and Marco Gruatto. In 1447 the thoroughgoing remodelling
of the sacristy was begun. It was completed by Aleši in 1460. The
carved and inlaid late Gothic armoire in the sacristy is the work of
the Trogir craftsman Grgur Vidov (1457), brought from Venice by
Koriolan Cipiko (who was then the cathedral’s master of the fabric).
Liturgical objects and relics are preserved in the Treasury: a seal of
the Trogir chapter, gift of Elizabeth née Kotromanić, widow of King
Louis of the Angevins (1483); there is a silver jug that according
76
Radovan’s Portal. A genuine trademark of
Trogir sculpting is Master Radovan, the most
important sculptor of Croatian medieval art.
He signed his name on the main portal in an
inscription that runs under the lunette and
the reliefs of the Annunciation at the side,
where he is celebrated as “the best of all in
this art” (cunctis hac arte preclarum).
In the centre of the upper zone of the portal
is a lunette in which Radovan managed to
link into a united composition the scenes of
the Nativity, the Journey of the Magi and the
Adoration of the Shepherds. At two ends at
the base of the arch that has wound around
the lunette the master has shown the
Annunciation, in the middle of the arch the
Adoration of the Kings, to the right Joseph’s
Dream, and at the sides groups of angels
celebrating. Radovan’s lunette is the first
European tympanum that takes the Nativity
as the central theme of a whole facade. The
starting point for a reading is the lunette –
carved “à double face” with a depiction of
the Nativity on the front with a cross sign
at the rear, one and the other provided
with uncommonly exhaustive doctrinal
declarations. The external frame of the portal
is powerfully signalled with lion sculptures
on brackets. To the right is a lion crushing a
dragon, to the left a lioness holding a lamb
in her paws, while two cubs sleep below her. cycle of the months (March and April on the
At the base of the portal eight telamons are left, December, January and February on the
carved, bearing the pilasters of the portal right), shown through activities associated
on their backs. On the front side of the with them and the appropriate zodiacal
pilasters along the door is an incomplete signs. And in the whole of the bottom zone
is a system of scenes with the topic of sin and Trogir
the state of the human race before the first
laws were made.
Today’s portal unit was not created all
at once. The original architectural and
iconographic programme of the portal was
considerably expanded in the last third of
the 13th century. Several craftsmen worked
on the making of the new early Gothic
frame; the contents of it underline the
theme of Sin and Redemption. The statues
of the naked Adam and Eve, placed on the
lions, represent Original Sin, and the scenes
of the Incarnation and the Passion tell of
the Redemption of Man. On the external
pilasters (where Radovan had meant to show
the other seasons) are six carved apostles,
also an incomplete sequence, mediators of
the Redemption. At the other external arch
that develops around the lunette in the core
of the upper scene are a number of other
scenes in sequence: the Flight into Egypt
(left end), Baptism in the Jordan (opposite
side), Temptation in the Desert (above the
Baptism), and Entry into Jerusalem, Washing
of the Feet, Arrest, Flagellation, Crucifixion
and Resurrection with the Three Marys.
The successors of Radovan should also be
attributed the construction of the whole
forecourt of the cathedral as well as the
ciborium and the octagonal pulpit in the
interior.
77
Trogir

Chapel of the Blessed to tradition was also given by Queen Elizabeth; a mitre of Bishop
John of Trogir Kažotić of the mid-14th century, studded with pearls; an ivory altar
of the Embriachi workshop (early 15th century); a silver cross, the
work of goldsmiths of Avignon (around 1310-1320) – all works re-
Reliquaries of the
cently brilliantly restored and interpreted. Also interesting is the
arms of the Blessed embroidered hood of a bishop’s pluvial (end of the 15th century) with
John of Trogir a depiction of St Martin on horseback sharing his cloak with the
beggar.
Immediately after the baptistery was completed, a contract was
signed to erect a new chapel to the Blessed John of Ursini (1468);
in its amalgam of architecture and stone sculpture, this is a classic
specimen of 15th century art.
It is also important to visit the Pinacotheque of the cathedral in the
parish house (with a polyptych from the high altar of the cathedral
of the 1270s; pieces by Blaž Jurjev of Trogir, Quirizio da Murano,
Gentile Bellini, the workshop of Paolo Veneziano, Dujam Vušković,
a number of illuminated codices). In the lobby to the Pinacotheque
you can see the archaeologically presented remains of the hexafoil
church of St Mary, mentioned as early as the beginning of the 8th
century, but knocked down in 1851. Recently, one of its apses has
been uncovered in the wall of the chapel of St Sebastian, with inter-
esting Renaissance graffiti on the plaster. All through the Middle
78
 Chapel of the Blessed John of Trogir.
The baptismal certificate of the
chapel is preserved - an uncommonly
detailed contract concerning the
beginning of its construction entered
into on January 4, 1468, in Trogir,
between the master of the fabric of the
cathedral, Niccolò Ciprianus, the stone
mason Andrija Aleši and Koriolan
Cipiko, who had a power of attorney
from sculptor Niccolò di Giovanni. The
Chapel holds a genuine anthology of
the Renaissance sculptures of Andrija
Alessi, Niccolò di Giovanni of Florence
and Ivan Duknović, and four statues of
Alessandro Vittoria were also carved
for it (later moved to the attic of the
bell tower after Baroque modifications,
when four windows were opened up
at the places of the original niches with
statues). The initiator of the plan and
the construction of the chapel was
Koriolan Cipiko. The chapel, however,
from the point of view of sculptures,
is primarily the work of Niccolò di
Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello.
In the gallery of statues in the chapel,
Duknović’s masterpiece of ca 1482
stands out – St John the Evangelist,
a statue (second from the entrance
on the left hand side) that under the
toga of the saint hides the figure of
Alvise, son of Koriolan Cipiko, raised
to eminence by his poetic fame and
the honours of a prelate. To the left
Trogir
is a statue of St Thomas, also a work
Ages, under its window onto the square there by Duknović, but one of the last
was a sarcophagus upon which the people of (1508). Among the works of Niccolò di
Trogir were wont to make their vows. Giovanni and his workshop, the finest
are St John the Evangelist (around
Another must is a visit to the lapidarum of 1482) and St Paul (1489) in the zone
Renaissance sculptures in the Romanesque of the apostles, the Coronation of the
Virgin (around 1480) in the lunette
church of St John the Baptist, which belonged below the ceiling – with a gallery of
to the famed Benedictine monastery. The great angelic childlike faces, as well as a
Mourning on the southern wall is one of the fin- sequence of putti that symbolically
bear the weight of the cornice,
est works of Niccolò di Giovanni and of Renais- standing on the pilasters between
sance sculpture in general; it is usually linked to the niches for the apostles, and in the
the tragic death of the wife of Koriolan Cipiko, ground floor a sequence of putti with
torches, symbols of eternal life. The
1492, but it is more probably that it was created bust of the Creator in a medallion
for the altar surmounting the grave of his father in the middle of vault is a Baroque
Petar, of the 1470s. facsimile of that of Niccolò (damaged
and now in the Lapidarium of the
The Benedictine Convent of St Nicholas. The municipal museum), the work of
church alongside the convent (founded in 1066) Ignacije Macanović of 1778. In its
was put up on the site of the pre-Romanesque first two centuries the chapel was the
mausoleum of Bishop Jacopo Turlon
church of St Domnius. The interior was given a (obit 1483) and the chapel of the holy
radical Baroque treatment in the mid-18th cen- sacrament, for the body of the Blessed
tury (interesting Baroque stuccowork and al- John was moved to the chapel only in
1681. when a Gothic sarcophagus was
tars). Over the picturesque altar, in 1598 Tripun brought into the Renaissance chapel,
Bokanić built a bell tower. and Baroque angels placed by it.
79
Trogir

Dominican Monastery A 2nd century BC Greek inscription has been incorporated into the
in the foreground southern wall of the courtyard, mentioning the city magistrates. In
the precious collection of artworks, the famed Kairos is on show, a
relief with the figure of the youngest son of Zeus, the god of the lucky
moment (4th or 3rd century BC after an original by Lysippus). A relief
Kairos (Collection
of the Benedictine with a depiction of Achilles listening to Priam’s plea to be given the
Convent) body of Hector (3rd century) was uncovered in archaeological exca-
vations in the church. Among the pictures, an icon of Madonna and
Child (second half of the 13th century, close to the style of the Master
of the Burano Virgin) and works of Paolo Veneziano, Blaž Jurjev,
Antonio Zanchi, Nicollò Grassi stand out, in addition to a number
of objects of liturgical vestments and vessels .
St Dominic’s. The monastery was founded in 1265. The church with
just a nave was built throughout the 14th century. In 1372 the rather
mediocre Venetian sculptor Niccolò Dente did a lunette for the
portal with depictions of the Virgin and Child between the Blessed
Augustin Kažotic and St Mary Magdalene. His sister Bitkula, pi-
ous matron of Trogir and donatrix, kneels at the feet of the Blessed
Augustin. In the interior is the tomb of Trogir Humanists Ivan and
Šimun Sobota, with whom the line of that important Trogir family
became defunct, the work of Niccolò di Giovanni of 1469. Left of the
triumphal arch is a lovely wooden altar with a picture of the Circum-
cision by Palma the Younger (1607). The convent cloister was seri-
80
 Ivan Duknović. Ivan Duknović (Joannes in this country. After an intermezzo in
Duhnovich or Ioannes Dalmata) born his home country, Duknović worked
around 1440 in Trogir, died after 1509, for several years at the court of King
was the son of Stjepan or Stephen, Matthew Corvin in Hungary, where he
one of the more important builders of did so well that in 1488 the king gave
Trogir cathedral. After his first lessons in him the castle of Majkovecz. In a number
sculpting in his home town, he honed of classic works that this most important
his skills in Italy. In Rome, in the 1470s, Croatian Renaissance artist bequeathed,
he won a number of major commissions, we would mention reliefs of the Virgin
particularly from Cardinal Pietro Barbo, in the Padua and Trogir city museums, a
soon to be Pope Paul II, for whom, statue of St Blaise in the Rector’s Palace
together with Mino da Fiesole, he carved in Dubrovnik, a bust of the Humanist
a tomb in the old basilica of St Peter, Carloo Zeno in Museo Correr in Venice
the most monumental work of its kind and – probably the last – the tomb of
in the whole of the 15th century. An the Blessed Girolamo Gianelli in the
uncommon reverberation of the fame cathedral in Ancona. The charming
shield-bearing putto from the main
that he achieved in the Eternal City can
portal of the Cipiko palace (also the work
be seen in the fact that a Duknović
of Duknović), which lies across the way
marble Madonna and Child is placed from the cathedral in Trogir, is one of the
over the grave of Pope John Paul II (Carol trademarks of the Croatian Renaissance
Woytila), according to his testamentary and the most important artefact in the
wish. city museum. The putto with the flaring
At the beginning of the 1480s he was torch stands legs astride on the beak of
working in his native Trogir. The statue a galley, with a cloak fluttering as if in
of St John the Evangelist that he carved the wind, clearly alluding to the rank of
for the chapel of the Blessed John of admiral that Koriolan Cipiko held in the
Trogir in the Cathedral is the first truly Venetian fleet in the Levant (1470-1474).
free-standing three-dimensional statue Duknović’s oeuvre, exhibited today in
Berlin and Paris, Rome and Budapest, Trogir
Trogir and Dubrovnik, gives us an
authentic picture of the highest artistic
and intellectual reaches of sculpture
created in a close relationship between
very discerning patrons and an artist
formed in the epicentre of the European
Renaissance, an artist who managed,
working together, for example, with
several important Tuscan sculptors, to
preserve a highly individual idiom and
even more so his own temperament.

Blaž Jurjev of Trogir, Virgin in Rose Garden

Ivan Duknović, putto with
coat of arms of Cipiko family 81
Trogir

ously damaged in the Allied bombing of Trogir in 1944. A number

of valuable works of art are to be seen in the monastic collection (the
buckle of a pluvial with a miniature and a polyptych of Blaž Jurjev of
Trogir, as well as late Gothic reliquaries from the Dominican church
of Holy Cross on Čiovo).
St Peter’s. This church belonged to another Benedictine convent,
built alongside the medieval chapel of St Plato. Only the courtyard
with the Baroque well head is left of the cloister. The waist-length
picture of St Peter built in over the Baroque portal of the church
was carved by Niccolò di Giovanni, probably late in the 1480s.
Among the pictures in the church, particularly interesting are those
by Zanchi, Molinari and Lazzarini. At the end of the 17th century
the sculptor Jakov Jučen was at work in Trogir, making a series of
nice compositions in polychromed wood, and it was perhaps he that
worked on the panelled ceiling and the housing of the organ. Over
the high altar there are wooden statues of SS. Peter and Paul.
In the sequence of patrician palaces and houses, in addition to those
already mentioned on the main square, the Lucić Palace is particu-
larly prominent, within a complex of houses remodelled many times
adjacent to the southern city walls. The northern facing facade with
its lovely Renaissance portal and the courtyard with arcades and
balconies are correlated with the remodelling of the palace under-
82
 The Garagnin Palace (Garagnin-
Fanfogna from 1840) was converted
in 1966 into Trogir Municipal
Museum. It is composed of an
assemblage of houses of different
stylistic features (onto the main
street there is a three-mullion
window with the coats of arms of
the Lipavić family, probably the
work of Aleši) that were given a
common denominator in a major
Baroque overhaul, particularly in
the monumental northern elevation
and the lavish salons and stairs
inside. The Garagnin Fanfogna
library with a number of very rare
books (in the original ambience, with
decorated ceilings and armoires from
the 19th century) is one of the few
preserved old libraries in Dalmatia.
In the museum set-up, as well as the
valuable furniture, the paintings and
statues, the archival documents and
books a portrait of one of the owners
of the palace, Ivan Luka Garagnin Jr
(1764-1841) is exhibited; he was an
Trogir
envoy to Napoleon in Paris in 1808,
the first honorary conservator of
monuments in Dalmatia. The paving
taken by Jerolim Lucić, grandfather of celebrated of the courtyard (I. Macanović) is
historian Ivan Lucić, in the first half of the 16th particularly picturesque, with a little
Romanesque two-storey house
century. Part of the ground floor and first floor still surviving in the corner. The
of the assemblage were recently turned into the Lapidarium was opened in 1987
municipal library. in the ground floor of the one-
time utility wing in the court, after
thoroughgoing archaeological
excavations had determined to a
great extent our understanding of
the earliest history of the town. The
remains of a Hellenistic and medieval
wall and a late Antiquity vaulted
tomb are presented. Most important
of the artefacts are sculptures of
Duknović, Aleši and Niccolò di
Giovanni, with a number of other
sculptures ranging from Antiquity to
the Baroque.
At the end of the 18th century the
Garagnin family laid out what were
in that period very interesting
grounds with a Lapidarium (on the
whole fragments from Solin) on
the mainland across the bridge,
not far from the Dobrić spring, with
buildings designed by Giannantonio
Selva (who designed the La Fenice
theatre in Venice, as well as the
Garagnin villa in nearby Divulje).
83
Trogir

Olive tree from the Seget. In 1564 Trogir patrician Jakov Rotondo obtained a license to
5th to 6th century at build a tower alongside a fortified village. The road from Travarica
Sudanel over Trogir
in front of Trogir to Seget was shaded with lovely trees, felled before
military operations in 1648.
Marina. This was created as a settlement planned for the defence of
Bishop’s the serfs who worked on the estates of the bishops of Trogir (famed
castello in Marina oil and dried figs). The rectangular tower with battlements sticking
out on brackets (originally with a drawbridge) was built in 1495 by
Bishop Francesco Marcello. It got is name from the church dedicated
to St Marina on the way into the village.

84
 Trogir

Seget 85
Stobreč

Stobreč and the

mouth of the STOBREČ
Žrnovnica
Stobreč on the mouth of the Žrnovnica River was in ancient times
called Epetium. Originally a Greek-Issaean settlement, in Roman
times it became the centre of a city prefecture as part of the Salona
ager. Only a tract of city ramparts with gates from the Greek period
Žrnovnica has been excavated.
Between Mt Mosor and the sea stretches a long mountain spur that
divides Srednja Poljica from Primorska Poljica. The inhabitants of the
villages of Mosor are particularly proud of the history of their Poljica
Princedom (“peasant republic”) a highly original medieval political
organisation of 12 rural communes, each of which had its own head-
man. The territory was defined by the Žrnovnica River, the sea, and the
crook of the Cetina below Zadvarje. The Poljica people paid tribute to
the Turks, a tribute as well as solders to Venice, and yet the princedom
had its own laws (the Poljica Statutes), which, it has been hypothesised,
inspired the English Humanist St Thomas More (1478-1535) in the
writing of his Utopia. The official language was Croatian Chakavian
(using the word ča, cha for what), written in Bosančica, which is a
Croatian version of Cyrillic. It retained its autonomy until the bloody
battle of Strožanci in 1807 in an insurrection against the Napoleonic
army. The last duke of Poljica, Ivan Ćović, fled in a Russian ship to
Russia. (For more about the Poljica Princedom, see the accompanying
guide to Zagora.)
86
 Stobreč

Theoretical reconstruction of Hellenistic Epetium (B. Gabričević)

Every village of Primorska Poljica (maritime

Poljica) calls its part of the mountain by a special
name, most often after the titular saints of the
ancient churches of the deities (Perun over the
Žrnovnica was the Slavic thunder god). On the
edge of the flysch zone under the spur itself there
are a number of picturesque little ancient villages
(Podstrana, Jesenice, Duće). By the sea, near the
Church of St Martin in Podstrana lies the Roman
Relief with depiction of St George at the settlement Pituntum, as shown by the numerous
Parish Church in Žrnovnica archaeological finds, the most suggestive of which
87
Stobreč

Double church in the are fragments of a sarcophagus built into the boundary wall of the old
Jesenice graveyard part of the graveyard of the church. At the Jesenice graveyard over
Sumpetar is the interesting double church of St Stephen and St An-
thony with a pre-Romanesque altar screen of the 11th century, and a
Niccolò di Giovanni, statue of St Stephen by Niccolò di Giovanni. The cemetery contains a
statue of St Stephen monument to Mato Brničević, who was shot at the beginning of 1918
for his leading role in the revolt of the sailors in Austro-Hungarian
Boka Kotorska. Once close was the monastery of St Peter – sveti Petar
u Selu, which was founded by a wealthy man from Split, Petar Crni in
the last quarter of the 11th century on the ruins of an Early Christian
church. It was probably destroyed during the Tartar inroads of 1242.
It is known for the collection of documents that is a first rate source
for an understanding of the social and economic relationships in the
Croatian early Middle Ages (the Supetar Cartulary is exhibited in the
Treasury of Split Cathedral). The parish church in Duće has a nice
Vlaho Bukovac altarpiece.
Going on from this mountain to the south east, across the canyon of
the Cetina River, extends the Omiška Dinara range, linking up at Dup-
ci / Vrulja, with spurs of Biokovo. Vrulja (the name comes from the
strong freshwater springs in the sea) is the place where the Omiš and
the Makarska rivieras meet and where one of the few routes to Zagora
(the hill country in the background) starts. A number of old villages
(Stanići, Lokva Rogoznica, Medići, Mimice, Marušići, Pisak) are
known today for their lovely pebbled beaches.
88
Supetar Cartulary (Treasury of

Stobreč
Split Cathedral)

89
 Fedor Karačaj, view of Omiš, around 1830
Omiš

90
Omiš

91
Omiš

Mouth of the Cetina

OMIŠ
On the left bank of the mouth of the Cetina River (Nestos – accord-
ing to the Pseudo-Scylax’s Periplus, a kind of pilot, of the 4th century
BC, hence the name of the Illyrian tribe of the Nesti, afterwards
known as the Onastini) Roman Oneum developed, perhaps on the
Bell tower of
parish church border between two large Illyrian tribal groupings, of the Delmati
and the Daorsi. The settlement of the Onastini was once in the ham-
let called Baučići in Borak over Omiš. Their neighbours were the
Narestini in Jesenice (Nareste) or in Tugare, and their neighbours
in turn were the Pituntini in today’s Podstrana (Pituntium) and in
the pertaining interior (Srinjine, Dubrava). Oneum probably did not
have an urban character in Roman times, and neither did the other
settlements in Primorska Poljica mentioned.
An inscription from a public building from the time of Emperor
Claudius (AD 51 or 52) and a relief with a figure of a bacchante are
the most important Omiš monuments of Antiquity. The first is kept
in the collection of the municipal museum, the second in the Ar-
chaeological Museum in Split. Still more important is an inscription
in Cyrillic of the 12th century found at the old Omiš cemetery and
mentioning Duke Miroslav Kačić, who reigned over neighbouring
Brač and Hvar in the early 13th century.
92
 Omiš Pirates. In the Middle Ages Omiš
was the fastness of the Neretvan pirates.
In 839 the Venetians entered into a
treaty (probably somewhere near today’s
Sv. Martin half way between Omiš and
Split) with Croatian Duke Mislav and
Nereteva Duke Družak, according to
which their ships were given free and
unscathed passage through the waters
of the Neretvans. But in 874 Pope John
VIII himself had to write to Croatian
Duke Domagoj asking him to restrain
the pirates. The Venetians paid the
Omiš pirates a tribute for safe passage
which was then called Justice. As well
as the Venetians, the Omiš pirates also
defied the mighty Byzantine emperor
Manuel Comnenus (1120-1180) and the
Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I, king of
Jerusalem and Sicily (11520-1190).
Omiš is the seat of the Dukes Kačić, who
would give all the Dalmatian towns
headaches, and so they would attempt
to make peace treaties with them (Kotor
1167; Dubrovnik 1180). From 1222 to
1226 a war was waged against them by
Andrew II, with encouragement from the
pope. “The natural position of their city
tempted them to go in for piracy”, wrote
one Baroque travel writer. They attacked
the ships of Friedrich II off the coast of
Apulia. They were particularly often
at war with Split and laid waste Split
territory on Brač and Šolta.
The Omiš pirates were able to dominate Omiš
the Adriatic by their courage and the

particular construction of their ships.

They made use of rowing boats, Omiš
arrows, with shallow draughts, that
enabled them to manoeuvre rapidly and
in the case of danger to the course of the
Cetina River, which was defended by an
underwater wall (called Mostina) at the
very mouth of the Cetina.
Among the summer attractions for
tourists (along with the festival of
Dalmatian a cappella songs, concerts of
classical music and rafting) increasing
attention is being attracted by events
such as the Omiš Pirate Evenings
and Pirate Battles with a picturesque
reconstruction of the battle that the
Canyon of the Cetina with Zakučac in the background, Omiš pirates waged against the Venetian
site of the Shrine of St Leopold Mandić navy.
93
Omiš

Babnjača The square along the church under the looming crags is one of the
over Priko most picturesque miniatures of urban design of the Baroque period
along the Croatian coastline. The Parish Church of St Michael (Mi-
hovil), consecrated in 1629, was erected on the foundations of an
older church. The portal gives the impression of a wooden altar re-
Renaissance single table, but is actually characteristic of the early Baroque central Dal-
light window matian carving workshop, like that of the Bokanić family. In the
interior is a monumental wooden gilt high altar, and in front of it
a statue of Our Lady, the work of Fano Čućić, a Korčula woodcarver
of the second half of the 16th century; a late Gothic polychromed
crucifix of Juraj Petrović (mid-15th century); and pictures by Palma
the Younger, Matteo Ingoli and Matteo Ponzoni-Pončun.
On the city cardo that links the two gates of the city there are sev-
eral house that have retained their original use in the ground floors
(selling salted sardines from barrels, wine from barrels and so on).
The Renaissance House of the Happy Man (1545) got its name from
the inscription on a moulded arch of the portal: GRACIAS AGO
TIBI DOMINE QUIA FUI IN HOC MUNDO (I give thanks to thee,
Lord, that I was in this world). The complex of the churches of St
Roch (17th century) and Holy Ghost (1585) with a nicely balanced
double staircase and with a city bell tower and clock tower stands at
the passage into the upper town (Funtana).
94
 Omiš
Right alongside the river, at the site of the one-
time western city gate, in the early 19th century
a graceful square was designed (Poljički trg), the
northern side of which is closed by the Baroque
Caralipeo-Despotović Palace with a Croatian
inscription of the 16th century which, roughly
translated, says “whoever here comes, cheerily
home goes”.
On the western city gate built in 1541 the his-
torical coat of arms of Omiš has been placed.
At the other end of the main street in the town,
in a block in front of the eastern city gate, is the
Municipal Museum with a small but fine collec-
tion (the flag and Statutes of Poljica) and a Lapi-
darium (Antique finds from Borak, a Cyrillic
inscription from the time of the Kačićes).
The city centre is dominated by Peovica Tower of
the 13th century (Mirabela), thoroughly restored
after having been demolished by a lightning bolt
in 1979. The central communication and divi-
sion between old and new Omiš is Fošal, all in
the shadow of vast plane trees, with its pictur-
Portal of the Parish Church of St Michael esque fish market and producer market (Ribar-
95
Omiš

Starigrad, nica, Pazara). The name Fošal comes from the fosse or moat along-
i.e. Burg, over Omiš side the city walls, knocked down in 1862. To the east of the eastern
gate is the old cemetery with St Luke’s and a number of Antique
sarcophagi and Renaissance and Baroque gravestones of the Omiš
gentry - which must be the most suggestive such whole in open air
on the Croatian coastline. The Franciscan Monastery at Skalice was
Vrulja founded to the east of the town in 1716 when the friars came to take
refuge from the Turks from Prološko Blato. Starigrad (Fortica; 245
m), a medieval fort over Borak, additionally fortified in the 16th and
17th century, gives a one-of-a-kind view of the city, the islands across
the road and Poljica in the background. It is being restored thanks
to the uncommon enthusiasm of a group of people from Omiš. One
approaches it along the path from the city itself or by a twenty min-
ute walk, which will be remembered as a real hike, by a signposted
path from the road from Baučić.
On the right bank of the Cetina, on the mouth of the river, lies the
chapel of St Peter – sveti Petar na Priku, one of the most important
Early Croat buildings of the 9th to the 11th century (It has been dealt
with at length, since it belongs historically to Poljica, in the guide
to Zagora.)
Radman’s Mills / Radmanove mlinice with immemorial plane trees
and trout fish ponds is a favourite place to go for a day trip (and a
bathing place), and is best reached by boat from Omiš.
96
 Omiš

Mouth of the Cetina in a view from the top of Mosor 97

98
Makarska
Makarska

99
Makarska

MAKARSKA AND THE LITTORAL

The Makarska littoral [primorje], the softest and gentlest region in
the Adriatic, has since ancient time been bounded by Vrulja and
Baćina in front of the mouth of the Neretva River, and the ridge of
Biokovo, as imposing as the Alps. The highest peak is at a visible
1762 m a.s.l. It got its name from the chapel of St George (Jure),
which in 1964, for the sake of the building of a TV relay was relo-
cated somewhat lower, even now attracting pilgrims and other visi-
tors on the last Saturday every July. The road to the top is entirely
asphalted but driving is allowed only from dawn to twilight. Since
1981 the whole wide natural framework of the mountain (19,550 ha)
has been a nature park with a conservation order, looked after by a
special public service. In the immediate future, this is likely to lead
to the conditions being attained for it to be a national park, very
likely with an extension of the conservation area. In 1984, on 16.5 ha
over the village of Kotišina, Biokovo Botanical Garden was laid out.
It was founded by Franciscan scientist Jure Radić (1920-1990) for the
sake of growing and protecting the most important plants of Biok-
ovo. He also laid out the Ecological Learning Trail from his birth
house in Baška Voda to Sv. Jure on Biokovo, and to the entrance door
of the Mountain and Sea Institute north of the Franciscan Museum
in Makarska, in which in 1963 a famed Malacology Museum was
founded, showing an excellent collection of shells.
100
 101
Makarska
Makarska

Cathedral of Makarska – the Antique settlement of Muccurum (in the 6th centu-
St. Mark and Jerome ry) or Mokron (in the writing of Constantine Porphyrogenitus of the
10th century) was created at the foot of Biokovo in an elliptical bay
sheltered by two peninsulas, Sv. Petar and Osejava. On Sv. Petar was
a prehistoric Illyrian hill fort and later a Roman working complex,
Ivan Rendić, as well as a late Antiquity castrum and medieval fort with church
monument to Fra
Andrija Kačić Miošić
(knocked down in the Venetian-Turkish wars; a more recent one
demolished in 1963, restored in 1993). The natural amphitheatre in
which Makarska made its nest is today all in green which only in
the 1880s began to cover the leaden grey karst of proud Biokovo.
The historical core contains several valuable Baroque complexes and
palaces (of the Ivanišević, Alačević, Karalipeo-Mrkušić families, for
instance). During the 18th century west of the main square along the
longitudinal line of communication interrupted by smaller trans-
verse streets several residential blocks were put up with a string of
fine Baroque palaces, according to a well-rounded urban design. At
the time of Venetian rule Makarska once again obtained its own see
(1695). On the main square the Cathedral of SS. Mark and Jerome
(1770-1776) was built after plans by the military engineers Francesco
Melchiori and Bartolo Riviera. The high altar is the work of Pietro
Onigha (1786). Before the church is a fountain, the work of Giuseppe
Bisaggio of 1775, renovated in 1989, and a monument to the most
read Croatian poet, Fra Andrija Kačić Miošić, erected in 1989, a
masterpiece of Ivan Rendić.
102
 The Franciscan Monastery in
Makarska was founded in 1502

Makarska
alongside the Church of St Mary. It was
rebuilt after the Cyprus War (1570-1573)
and completed in 1614, with a cloister
that on three sides has rustic arcades
and porticos with columns on the first
floor. The bell tower was completed in
1715. Old St Mary’s is used nowadays
to house a picture collection. The new
church was built after a plan of Stjepan
Podhorski and was completed in 1940.
A theological college with a fine library
and archives was founded alongside
the monastery; it grew out of the earlier
philosophy college of the Franciscan
province of Silver Bosnia. Part of the
monastery has provided a home for an
exceptional shell collection, and also
at work here is the Biokovo Vegetation
Institute founded by Fra Jure Radić.

Cloister of the Franciscan monastery

103
Makarska

From the point of view of urban design the complex of the Mala
Obala (Marineta, “little seafront”) of the turn of the 18th/19th cen-
turies is interesting, as is the part of the seafront in which the late
Baroque facade of St Philip’s of 1757 stands out, with its low bell
tower (today a collection of ecclesiastical art). Alongside it was a
monastery of St Philip, founded by Bishop Blašković.
Also worth a visit is the shrine in Vepric, founded thanks to the
interest of Bishop Juraj Carić, around a cavern similar to that in
Lourdes. It attracts pious folk from the Cetina to the Neretva, from
Zagora and the islands.
Baška Voda. The name comes from Bast, a characteristic sub-Biok-
ovo village, today mainly deserted. Bast is mentioned among the
villages in the littoral (Primorje) that Hrvoje’s nephew Duke Juraj
Hrvatinić-Vojsalić in 1424 restored as ancestral possession to the
Krajina-Hum landowning family of the Jurjevićes, who confided the
spiritual care to the Franciscans. Until quite recently the grandi-
ose plateau below Biokovo was “tended” by sheep and goats (some
5 to 6000 of them), enabling the production of a celebrated kind
of cheese. The last well preserved complex of characteristic sub-
Biokovo vernacular architecture under its white stone roofs in the
hamlet of Ribarovići is particularly picturesque; this also goes for
the ancient shealings in Staro selo, on the terraces and in the rocks
high over St Roch’s.
104
 105
Makarska
Makarska

In the actual port, an ancient shipwreck was recently uncovered,

which additionally confirms the hypothesis that Roman Biston
should be placed here; this is mentioned in his Cosmography by
Anonymous of Ravenna in the 7th century. The late Baroque church
of St Lawrence was probably erected on an Antique site.
Brela Donja. A scattered place with well defended rural complexes
(probably at the site of ancient Berulia) was created by the move-
ment of the sub-Biokovo hamlet dwellers down to the sea. Here in
1710 the enterprising bishop of Makarska Nikola Bijanković (who
defined the idea of urban Makarska at that time) built a hospice,
now alas no more. Only remaining is the tradition of the Bijanković
Pine along the strand, under which this bishop of holy memory was
wont to meditate. By the side of the parish church of the 19th century,
though on the site of a predecessor, among the pines and oaks is a
medieval graveyard.
Tučepi. The remains of Antique architecture on the southern slopes
of the mountain Sutvid and fragments of Early Christian stone fur-
nishing at the local graveyard, where there are several medieval
gravestones, tell of the continuity of the settlement. The Chapel of
St George (sv. Juraj) comes from the end of the 11th century. It was
erected within the orthogonal layout of a Roman villa and on the
remains of a basilica of late Antiquity, while a little hermit cell also
existed alongside it. Local legend says that here Pietro Candiano is
106
 Makarska
St George’s in Tučepi buried; he was the doge of Venice who was killed
in a battle with the Neretvans on October 18, 887,
after which the Venetians signed a treaty with
Croatian Duke Branimir in 888, in which they
were allowed free navigation and trade along the
Adriatic on payment of a tribute.
Parish Church in Gornji Tučepi

107
Makarska

Podgora Podgora. This little town developed in several hamlets by the sea
and along the road to Vrgorac. In the 1700s towers were put up as
defence against the Turks. Close by was a gushing spring of fresh wa-
ter and a therapeutic salt spring called Klokun. The Mrkušić family
built a late Baroque villa (today modified) with an octagonal chapel
Parish Church in
dedicated to the Heart of Jesus (1802) along the sea.
Gornja Podgora The Classicist Parish Church of All Saints (18th century) in the centre
of Gornja [Upper] Podgora is one of the grandest buildings of the
Makarska littoral put up after the departure of the Turks. The Church
of St Tekla, on the early medieval site of Sutikla (which means St
Tekla), was built on the site of a church twice knocked down in an
earthquake, recently renovated from the ground up. Alongside the
medieval slabs on the graveyard is a monument in bronze, the work
of Ivan Rendić, put up to Mihovil Pavlinović (1830-1887), Croatian
Revival period politician who worked on the unification of Dalmatia
with the other parts of Croatia, and to be credited with Makarska
having been the first municipality to have a Croatian autonomous
administration in Dalmatia (in 1865). Over the port is a huge monu-
ment of gull’s wings (1962) raised in memory of the founding of the
first Partisan fleet, in 1942, right here in Podgora.
Drašnice. In the Gothic Church of St Stephen over the village a Ro-
man inscription has been found, as well as an inscription mention-
ing Herceg [Duke] Stephen of 1444.
108
 Makarska

Ivan Rendić, monument to Mihovil Pavlinović

109
Makarska

Igrane Igrane. In the graveyard with a fairly recent church the apse of a
medieval chapel, of St Saviour, was discovered. Over the village,
dominated by a new-Romanesque bell tower put up in 1920, a copy
of the tower of Split Cathedral, lies the Baroque Parish Church of
Our Lady of the Rosary, and Zalina kula (tower) of the 17th centu-
ry. In the hamlet called Markovići, in olive groves, here is an early
Romanesque basilica, of St Michael, the most important medieval
heritage unit in the Makarska littoral, with the interesting pseudo-
basilical roof.
Živogošće. The Franciscan monastery of Holy Cross was built by
friars from Mostar who in 1563 had to flee and roam around Her-
zegovina and the Imotski region until 1614, when the settled down
here, and in 1620 built a church, dedicating it to the patron of Bosna
argentina – Holy Cross. Under the monastery is a large spring of
fresh water that goes dry at low tide. A Roman epigram of Licin-
ianus and Pelagia carved into the bedrock over it, over the sae, dedi-
cated to the spring and the bounteous, has found its way into many
an anthology of Latin inscriptions, and deserves quoting, at leas in
part, in the original: Quis quet arcanum sapines pernoscere fontis?
nasceris e scopulis, fons, moriture fretis. (Who is so wise as to pen-
etrate the secret of the spring? Spring, the rock bears you, in the sea
you will die.)
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 Makarska
In the old village, in 1902, the neo-Romanesque
Church of St Dominic was put up, at the site of
the one-time old parish church of St Arnir. In
Franciscan monastery in Živogošće the graveyard there are several decorated medi-

111
Makarska

Zaostrog eval gravestones. The area is surrounded with a high wall complete
with loopholes, for it was a refuge in the Venetian-Turkish wars in
the 17th century.
Zaostrog. In the early medieval period this settlement is referred
to as Ostrog. As well as inscriptions, a relief with the depiction of a
Franciscan Mithraic bull sacrifice has been found and is exhibited in the monas-
church in Zaostrog
tery collection. First of all, an Augustine monastery was built here,
but in 1468 it was taken over by the Franciscans of Bosnia. It was
completed in the 17th century with the construction of a late Renais-
sance cloister. The church also contains marble altars and a nice
wooden choir, busts of poets Andrija Kačić Miošić and Ivan Despot,
the work of Ivan Rendić; particularly important is an organ by Petar
Nakić, an organ builder from Skradin, much famed in Venice in the
18th century. Ethnographic items in the ample monastic collection
are of particular significance.
Podaca. In the medieval town cemetery close to the Romantic ruins
of an abandoned village and tower of the 17th century lies the early
Romanesque chapel of St John, 12th century. It was renovated n the
15th, and painted with votive crosses, becoming the mausoleum of
the dukes of the ancient line of the Kačićes. Alongside it in 1762
the Baroque Parish Church of St Stephen was built in 1762. In 1888
the rich local man Ivan Cvitanović-Tomić had the separate campa-
112
 Makarska
nile built; he was one of the builders of the Suez
Canal. At the entry into the village of charac-
teristic stone house there is a tower built in the
1700s.
Podaca

113
Makarska

Drvenik Brist. In the old parish church dedicated to St Margaret, 1741 (built
on the site of an older church), there are the graves of the Kačićes
and close by a very large decorated stechak. In the hamlet of Kačići
is the native house of Fra Andrija Kačić Miošić – Croatian Homer
as he is called – a writer of philosophical, theological and popular
Kačić education works, as well as poet, very influential in the 18th and 19th
monument in Brist century. In his Razgovor ugodan naroda slovinskog he collected, in
the form of a folk poem, the most important events from Croatian
and South Slav history. The new parish church of St Mara (Mary)
in neo-Romanesque style was put up in 1870. By it is the Meštrović
monument to Kačić-Miošić. Along the coast through the 18th cen-
tury several working villa complexes were built, among which the
graceful three-storey building Diana—Kačić-Miošić is well pre-
served, with Antique spoliae, and a fine Baroque balcony.
Gradac. The name derives from the ruins of a fort built as a defence
against the Turks in the 17th century. In this area in 1666 there was
an important battle between the Turkish and Venetian forces, the
course of which is shown in detail in a drawing by a participant,
military engineer Giuseppe Santini. In the village, over the main
coast road, is a three-storey tower put up in 1661. Close by, next to
the Baroque church, is the village cemetery. In World War II, Italian
fascists burned almost all the houses.
114
 Makarska

Relief showing Mithras

(Zaostrog monastic
collection)
115
Makarska

Drvenik Drvenik. A place with ruins of a Baroque tower on a little peak north
of the village. In the walls and foundations of the Gothic church of
St George (given a Baroque makeover) there are several medieval
gravestones. Donja Vala are two working villas, side by side, of the
Ivičević family of the 18th century.
Antique Aronia, mentioned by the Tabula Peutingeriana and Anon-
ymous of Ravenna has been recently sought in the area around Zad-
varje – Brela, commanding an important junction around the pass
over Dupci and the great crook in the course of the Cetina. Zadvarje
(Dvare, Duare) was a medieval castle and important fort, the site of
bloody battles with the Turks in the Cretan War of the 17th century.

116
 117
Makarska
 ZAGREB

KARLOVAC OSIJEK
RIJEKA

SENJ
PULA

ZADAR

ŠIBENIK

TROGIR
Split
OMIŠ
Šolta Brač MAKARSKA
Hvar
Vis

DUBROVNIK

A1

118
 Split - Dalmatia County
Tourist Board
Prilaz braće Kaliterna 10/I
HR-21000 Split, CROATIA
tel./fax: +385 (0)21 490 032,
490 033, 490 036

e-mail: [email protected]
www.dalmatia.hr

A1

Drašnice
Igrane
Živogošće

Zaostrog
Podaca
Brist

119
 Split-Dalmatia County
Publisher:
Department of maritime affairs and tourism
Split-Dalmatia County
Tourist Board
On behalf of the publisher: dipl. oec. Joško Stella
dr. sc. Mili Razović
dr. sc. Joško Belamarić
Editor:
Written by: dr. sc. Joško Belamarić
Translator: Graham McMaster
Concept and design: Mario Brzić
Živko Bačić
Photographs:
Tonko Bartulović
Mario Brzić
Ivna Bučan
Boris Kragić
Ivo Kraljević
Ivo Pervan
Ante Verzotti
Arhiva MIM-a
Arhiva 3LHD
Arhiva Turističke zajednice
Splitsko-dalmatinske županije
Layout, prepress: Studio Tempera Nova
Printing: TIPOMAT Tiskara

2010.

120
COVER PHOTO: MARIO BRZIĆ
 coast
Split

Solin

Kaštela

Trogir

A Cultural and Historical Guide to the Coast of the Split-Dalmatia County

Omiš

Makarska
and the littoral

The A Cultural and Historical

Guide to the Coast of
the Split-Dalmatia County