Šibenik Cathedral

Interesting facts

The vault of Juraj Dalmatinac's baptistery is assembled from just nine precisely cut stone blocks, locked together without any mortar.

It is described as the only building in Europe before the 19th century whose apse walls were fitted from cut slabs rather than mortared masonry.

The frieze of 74 heads is considered Europe's largest gallery of secular portrait sculpture on a church; none carries a name, rank or trade.

On the Lion Portal, the statue of Eve has a navel, a detail visitors often point out since she was created from Adam's rib.

When Šibenik fought Venice in 1409–1412, stone gathered for the cathedral was diverted to strengthen the city walls.

In 1441 the city council found serious building errors, had parts demolished, and hired Juraj Dalmatinac, then living in Venice, to take over.

Juraj's only surviving signature is carved beneath two putti on the north side of the cathedral.

Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino hid iron ties inside the walls and set the dome on an octagonal drum, a solution later used by Bramante and Michelangelo.

The stone came largely from the quarries of Brač, worked since antiquity and known as 'Brač marble', with more from Korčula, Rab and Krk.

The cathedral never had its own bell tower; a tower on the adjoining city walls served instead until it was pulled down in the late 19th century.

Why it is worth it

The Cathedral of St James in Šibenik is one of the most remarkable buildings of the Adriatic: a church raised entirely of stone, whose vaults, dome and even roof are made of precisely cut slabs that lock into one another with joints more like those of carpentry than masonry. Built over more than a century, it records in a single structure the passage from Gothic to Renaissance, and it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.

The foundation stone was laid on 9 April 1431, and work continued until 1536, with consecration in 1555. The first plans came from Francesco di Giacomo, but the decisive figure was Juraj Dalmatinac (Giorgio da Sebenico), who led the works from 1441 to 1473, enlarging the design. His best-known contribution is the frieze around the outside of the apses: more than seventy carved heads of men, women and children, individual portraits of the people of fifteenth-century Dalmatia rather than idealised types. Dalmatinac also created the small baptistery, where putti hold up the font beneath a richly carved vault. After him Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino (Nikola Firentinac) carried the building upwards from 1475 to 1505, completing the vaults and the dome in a purely Renaissance spirit, and Bartolomeo of Mestre and his son Jacob finished the work. The north Lion Portal, with Adam and Eve standing on lions, and the main west portal with Christ and the apostles frame the entrances. During the shelling of Šibenik in 1991 the dome was hit, and it was restored in 1996–1997.

Šibenik itself, first recorded in 1066 in a charter of King Peter Krešimir IV, rises like an amphitheatre around a sheltered bay where the river Krka meets the Adriatic. Its old town of steep lanes is guarded by several fortresses, among them St Nicholas at the harbour mouth, inscribed by UNESCO in 2017 as part of the Venetian Works of Defence.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in the old town of Šibenik, in central Dalmatia, Croatia. The nearest airport is Split Saint Jerome Airport (SPU), about 40 km away in a straight line; Zadar Airport (ZAD) lies further to the north-west. Šibenik is on the Adriatic coastal road and is the terminus of a branch railway line from Perković.

From the encyclopaedia

The Cathedral of St. James or simply Šibenik Cathedral is a triple-nave Catholic cathedral with three apses and a dome in Šibenik, Croatia. It is the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Šibenik. It is often known as "St. Jacob's", because Croatian, like many other languages, uses the same name for both "James" and "Jacob". It is dedicated to Saint James the Great.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Šibenik Cathedral

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia