Trogir Cathedral

The great west door of Trogir Cathedral is signed: in 1240 a local sculptor named Radovan carved his name in the lunette, together with an inscription naming him the best in his craft. Two nude figures of Adam and Eve stand on lions at either side of the entrance; around them run reliefs of the labours of the months and hunting scenes, then arches with episodes from the life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Resurrection, and at the centre the Nativity. The lifelike figures have often been compared with the Gothic sculpture of Chartres.

The Cathedral of St Lawrence, popularly called St John's after John of Trogir, a bishop who died in 1111 and was venerated for his holy life, replaced an early Christian cathedral destroyed when Saracens sacked the town in 1123. Building started in 1213 and the main body was largely complete by 1251, so the church is essentially Romanesque: a three-aisled basilica with massive piers, three semicircular apses and cross vaults showing the influence of Apulia. Work then continued for centuries. The nave received Gothic vaulting in the 15th century, when the large vestibule and the Gothic rose window of the west front were also added. Around 1467 Andrija Aleši built the baptistery at the end of the entrance hall. The bell tower, the only one built of the two planned, took from the late 14th to the late 16th century to complete, and each storey records its era: a Gothic first level rebuilt by Matija Gojković after Venetian forces damaged it in 1420, a second floor with Venetian Gothic windows reminiscent of the Ca' d'Oro, and a top storey by Trifun Bokanić, crowned with statues by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.

Inside, the chapel of Blessed John, begun in 1468 by Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino with Andrija Aleši, follows the ideals of antiquity in a close union of architecture and sculpture. It is built of large, precisely fitted stone blocks with no flat wall anywhere: torch-bearing figures appear to step from half-open doors of the underworld, Christ and the apostles stand in niches above, and the coffered ceiling carries the image of God surrounded by ninety-six heads of angels. Trogir itself, founded by Greek colonists from Vis in the 3rd century BC as Tragurion, sits on a small island between the mainland and the island of Čiovo; its walled historic centre, dense with palaces, churches and towers, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in Trogir's island old town, about 15 km west of Split in a straight line (some 27 km by road). Split Airport (SPU) lies about 4.5 km to the east of Trogir.