Church of St. Donatus

Interesting facts

The church is mentioned in the tenth century by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in his treatise De Administrando Imperio.

One reused Roman altar in the foundations still bears a dedication to Juno Augusta and Jupiter Augustus, now holding up a Christian church.

When the foundations were exposed for study, a whole row of Roman column drums appeared, showing the church rests directly on the paving of the forum.

Bishop Donatus was a diplomat who represented the Dalmatian cities before Charlemagne, recorded in Frankish annals in 805, which may explain the echoes of Aachen.

Tradition credits Donatus with bringing the relics of Saint Anastasia from Constantinople; they still lie in the neighbouring cathedral dedicated to her.

Donatus was buried in his own church, but after the French occupation of Zadar in the early nineteenth century his remains were moved to the cathedral.

The building is about 27 metres high and 22 metres wide, its central space rising the full height inside an outer ring of walls.

At ground level the central drum rests on six massive piers and two monolithic columns, which open in three arches towards the apses.

The upper gallery around the central space is reached by a spiral staircase, and the drum is capped by a shallow conical roof.

Zadar's archaeological museum occupied the church from 1893 to 1954.

Why it is worth it

A tall cylinder of pale stone standing in the middle of what was once Zadar's Roman forum, the Church of St. Donatus is the largest pre-Romanesque building in Croatia and the emblem of the old town. It was raised between the late eighth and early ninth centuries, in the Carolingian period, by Donatus, bishop of Zadar, and was originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Only in the fifteenth century did it take on the name of its builder.

The plan is circular, with an inner ring of piers and columns, a surrounding ambulatory, an upper gallery and three apses projecting to the east; the building is about 27 metres high and was once crowned by a dome. Scholars often compare it with the palace chapel of Charlemagne at Aachen and with San Vitale in Ravenna, the great round churches of the age. What makes St. Donatus unusual is how much of ancient Zadar is built into it. The builders took stone from the ruined forum around them, and Roman columns, cornices and inscribed blocks, including a sacrificial altar with a Latin inscription, can be seen embedded in the foundations and walls, so the church stands literally on the remains of the city that came before it.

Its later history was less devotional. Under Venetian rule, and again in the Napoleonic and Austro-Hungarian periods, it served as a warehouse, and in the twentieth century it briefly housed an archaeological museum. Today it no longer holds services; its bare interior and long reverberation have made it the main venue of Zadar's festival of medieval and Renaissance music.

Zadar itself sits on a narrow peninsula on the Dalmatian coast, a city founded in antiquity whose street grid still follows the Roman plan. St. Donatus stands beside the cathedral of St. Anastasia and the remains of the forum, at the heart of the peninsula.

Getting there

The church is in the old town of Zadar, on the city's peninsula. Zadar Airport (ZAD) is about 10 km to the south-east. Zadar is linked to Zagreb and Split by the A1 motorway and has a railway station on the mainland side of the city.

Church of St. Donatus

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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