St. Nicholas Fortress

Interesting facts

Before the fortress, two small medieval towers guarded the channel, and a chain stretched between them kept unwanted ships out.

Its bricks were shipped from the Veneto, a material common in Venetian forts of the time but unusual in Dalmatia.

Historians count it as the first tenaille in all of Venetian military architecture: two half-bastions joined by a recessed wall like a pair of pincers.

According to an anecdote, its only shot fired in anger, at Spanish ships near Zlarin, fell a few metres away because the damp wooden gun carriage gave way.

Its first garrison numbered 25 soldiers and five gunners, under a Venetian noble castellan who could not leave the fortress during his two-year term on pain of death.

A lion of St Mark once crowned the portal; recarved under Emperor Francis I, it was smashed and thrown into the sea by Yugoslav soldiers in 1926.

The fortress was armed with 32 cannons, placed so that the lower guns struck ships' hulls and the upper ones their masts.

The demolished monastery church of St Nicholas was replaced by a small chapel on the fortress terrace, which kept the saint's name for the whole fort.

In the 20th century a signal station on its terrace regulated shipping through the St Anthony Channel.

Why it is worth it

St. Nicholas Fortress sits almost in the sea at the entrance to the St. Anthony Channel, the narrow waterway that is the only sea approach to Šibenik. After the Ottomans took nearby Skradin and threatened to gain an outlet to the coast, Venice decided to close the channel. Work began in 1540 on the islet of Ljuljevac, where a Benedictine monastery of St. Nicholas had to be demolished to make room, and was completed around 1553. The designer was the Venetian military architect Giangirolamo Sanmicheli, nephew of the more famous Michele Sanmicheli.

The plan is a triangle with a rounded bastion facing the open sea and two elongated half-bastions facing the town. The walls are largely of brick on stone foundations, a material then thought to absorb cannon fire better. Gun ports close to the waterline were meant to strike approaching ships in the hull, while guns in the upper casemates would bring down their masts. The entrance is hidden behind the curve of the sea bastion and framed by a rusticated Renaissance portal made with the help of local masters Dujam of Split and Frano Dismanić of Šibenik. Its defences were never actually tested in battle: the fortress deterred attack simply by being there.

The army left in 1979. Since 2017 it has been part of the World Heritage Site "Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th and 17th Centuries". The islet is linked to the mainland by a narrow path.

Getting there

The fortress is about 3.5 km from Šibenik, at the mouth of the channel. The nearest airport is Split Saint Jerome Airport (SPU), about 41 km away.

St. Nicholas Fortress

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia