Architecture of Croatia

The architecture of Croatia has roots in a long history: the Croats have inhabited the area for fourteen centuries, but there are important remnants of earlier periods still preserved in the country.

Ancient heritage

Copper Age finds are from ''Vučedol culture'' (named after Vučedol near Vukovar). In Vučedol, people lived on hilltops with palisade walls. Houses were half buried, mostly square or circular (they were also combined in mushroom shape), with floors of burned clay and circular fireplaces.

The Bronze culture of the Illyrians, an ethnic group with distinct culture and art, started to organize itself in what is now Croatia. Numerous monumental sculptures are preserved, as well as walls of the citadel ''Nezakcij'' near Pula, one of numerous Istrian cities from the Iron Age.

Greek sailors and merchants reached almost every part of the Mediterranean including the shores of today's Croatia; there they have founded city-states in which they lived quite isolated. Trade cities on the Adriatic shores such as ''Tragurion'' (today Trogir), ''Salona'' ( Solin near Split), ''Epetion'' (today Poreč), Issa (Vis), were geometrically shaped and had villas, harbors, public buildings, temples and theatres. While the Greek colonies were flourishing on the island, on the continent the Illyrians were organizing their centers. Their art was greatly influenced by Greek art, and they even copied some. In the Neretva Delta, there was an important influence of the Hellenistic Illyrian tribe of Daors.

Romans subdued the Greek colonial cities in the 3rd century BC. They imposed an organization based on a military-economical system. Furthermore, the Romans subdued the Illyrians in the first century BC and organized the entire coastal territory by transforming the citadels into urban cities. After that the history of these parts is the history of Illyrian provinces of the Roman Empire.
Numerous rustic villas, and new urban settlements (the most impressive are ''Verige'' in Brijuni, Pula and Trogir - formerly Tragurion) demonstrate the high level of Roman urbanization. There were at least thirty urban cities in Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia with Roman citizenship (civitas). The best-preserved networks of Roman streets (decumanus/cardo) are those in ''Epetion'' (Poreč) and ''Jader'' (Zadar).
The most perfectly preserved Roman monuments are in ''Pola'' (Pula); founded in the first century dedicated to Julius Caesar. It is full of classical Roman art such as: stone walls, two city gates, two temples on the Forum, and remains of two theaters, as well as the Arch from the year 30 AD, and the temple of Augustus built in the years 2 to 14 AD, and finally the Fluvian Amphitheater (so called – Arena) from the 2nd century.
In the 3rd century AD, the city of ''Salona'' became the largest (it had 40,000 inhabitants) and most important city of Dalmatia. Near the city emperor Diocletian, born in Salona, built Diocletian's Palace around year the 300 AD, which is the largest and most important monument of late antique architecture in the world. On its pathways, cellars, domes, mausoleums, arcades and courtyards we can trace numerous different art influences from the entire Empire. In the 4th century, Salona became the center of Christianity for the entire western Balkans. It had numerous basilicas and necropolises, and even two saints: ''Domnius'' ( Duje) and Anastasius (''Staš'').

One of few preserved basilicas in western Europe (besides the ones in Ravenna) from the time of early Byzantium is Euphrasian Basilica in Poreč from the 6th century.
The early Middle Ages brought the great migration of the Slavs and this period was perhaps a '' Dark Age'' in the cultural sense until the successful formation of the Slavic states which coexisted with Italic cities that remained on the coast, each of them modelled after Venice.

Early Middle Ages

In the 7th century, the Croats, with other Slavs and Avars, came from Northern Europe to the region where they live today. They were on the level of Iron Age nomadic culture, so they did not know how to enjoy the advantages of urban cities. This is why they first inhabited city boundaries on close by rivers (like ''Jadro'' near Roman Salona).

The Croats were open to Roman art and culture, and first of all to Christianity. First churches were built as royal sanctuaries, and the influence of Roman art was strongest in Dalmatia where the urbanization was thickest and there were the largest number of monuments. Gradually that influence was neglected and certain simplification, alteration of inherited forms, and even creation of original buildings appeared. All of them (a dozen large ones and hundreds of small ones) were built with ''roughly cut stone'' (natively called – ''lomljenac'') bounded with thick layer of mortar from outside. Large churches are longitudinal with one or three naves like the St. Saviour at the source of the river Cetina, built in the 9th century. The church has strong semi-circular buttresses that give a feeling of fortification, emphasized by the mighty bell-tower positioned in front of entrance.

Smaller churches often have several apses. The largest and most complicated central based church from the 9th century is the church of St. Donatus in Zadar. Around its circular centre – with dome above – is a nave in the shape of a ring with three apses directed to the east; that shape is followed on the second floor forming a gallery. For that period, with its size and beauty, St. Donatus is comparable only with the chapel of Charlemagne in Aachen.

The altar fences and windows of those churches were highly decorated with transparent shallow string-like ornament that is called pleter (meaning to weave) because the strings were threaded and rethreaded through itself. Motifs of those reliefs were taken from Roman art (waves, three-string interlace, pentagrams, net of rhomboids etc.), but while in Roman art they only made the frame of a sculpture, in the Dark Ages it fills the entire surface. Sometimes figures from Bible appeared alongside this decoration, like ''Relief in Holy Nedjeljica'' in Zadar, and then they were dominated by their pattern. This also happened to engravings in early Croatian script – Glagolitic. Soon, the Glagolitic writings were replaced with Latin on altar fences and architraves of old-Croatian churches. Those inscriptions usually mention to whom the church was dedicated, who built it and when it was built, as well who produced the building. That was the way that ''"barbarian newcomers"'' could fit amongst the Romanised natives.

By joining the Hungarian state in the twelfth century, Croatia lost its independence, but it did not lose its ties with the south and the west, and instead this ensured the beginning of a new era of Central European cultural influence.

Romanesque

In the 11th century, monumental cities were built along the entire Dalmatian coast. Houses were constructed from stone. On the ground floor there were shops or taverns (natively – ''konoba''), seen today in cities such as Poreč, Rab, Zadar, Trogir and Split.
In those cities the most important buildings were churches. They were commonly stone-built basilicas with three naves, three apses, columns, arches, arcades and wooden roofs, and were erected near the monasteries of Benedictine monks who came out of Italy. St. Peter in ''Supetarska Draga'' on the island of Rab (11th century) is the best-preserved church of that type in Croatia. On the same island is the '' Cathedral of Rab'' (12th century) that has a high-Romanesque bell tower, the largest in Dalmatia. It is specific with its openings, which multiply with each level of floor (Latin: mono-fore, bi-fore, tri-fore, quadro-fore). This is typical for Romanesque architecture, but also architecturally innovative, as each floor is slightly lighter than the one below.

The Cathedral of St. Anastasia, Zadar (natively - St. Stošija) in Zadar (13th century) is marked outside by a string of blind arch-niches on both sides and on the frontal side where it also has two rose windows with radial columns and three portals. In is reminiscent of the cathedral in Pisa. Inside, it has three naves, slim columns that support a gallery, and flat figurative reliefs.

In Croatian Romanesque sculpture we see a transformation of decorative interlace relief (natively – pleter) to figurative, which is found on stone ceilings. At the end of the Romanesque period, in Istria there were workshops of monumental figures. They had geometrical and naturalistic features reminiscent of Gothic.
The best examples of Romanesque sculpture are the wooden doors of Split Cathedral done by artisan Andrija Buvina (c.1220) and the stone portal of the Trogir Cathedral done by artisan Radovan (c. 1240).

File:Cathedral of Split1.jpg, The famous bell tower of the Split Cathedral.
File:12th c.St Stosija.jpg, Cathedral of St Stošija in Zadar, 13th century
File:Zadar.St.Stosija.j1.jpg, Church of St. Mary in Zadar, mid 11th century
File:St Peters Basilica,Supetarska Draga-Rab - panoramio - Zoran Kurelić Rabko.jpg, St Peters Basilica in Supetarska Draga, Rab

Gothic

The Gothic art in the 14th century was supported by the culture of city councils, preaching orders (like the Franciscans), and knightly culture. It was the golden age of free Dalmatian cities that traded with Croatian feudal nobility in the continent. Urban organization and the evolution of Dalmatian cities can be followed through the development and expansion of Rab and Trogir, the regulation of streets in Dubrovnik, and the integration of Split. It was also a time of paving the streets with stone, sewage canals, and communalities.

The largest urban project of this period was the complete building of two new towns – Mali Ston and Ston, and about a kilometre of wall with guard towers between them (14th century). After Hadrian's wall, this was and is the longest wall in Europe. Thanks to the wall, all of Pelješac peninsula was surrounded and protected from land shore with the aim to protect the most valuable possession of the Republic of Ragusa – salt from Ston.

We can recognize Gothic fortifications with their high towers in the shape of a square prism from simple Romanesque ones, or round Renaissance one. The best-preserved ones in Croatia are in Istria ( Hum, Bale, Motovun, Labin etc.) and those on north (''Medvedgrad'' above Zagreb from year 1260) or on the south ''Sokolac'' in Lika (14th century).

The ''Franciscan church in Pula'' (1285) is the most representative example of Early Gothic. This simple one nave building with a wooden rib-vault ceiling, a square apse, and high stained glass windows was built from 13th to the 15th century.

Mongols destroyed the Romanesque cathedral in Zagreb during their scourge in 1242, but right after their departure Zagreb got the title of a free city from Hungarian King Béla IV. Soon after, bishop Timotej began to rebuild the cathedral in the new Gothic style. This was a building with three naves, polygonal apses, and rib-vault and it had Romanesque round towers. The naves were built in the 14th century, and the vault was finished in 15th. With the arrival of Turks in the 16th century, high walls and towers surrounded it. Only one tower was finished in the 17th century, while in the 18th the Baroque roof became the landmark of the entire city. An earthquake in 1880 severely damaged the cathedral. With the restoration in the 19th century in the Neo-gothic style, it lost its former harmony.

During the 14th century, the Split cathedral of St Duje and the cloister of the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik were also built.

In Dubrovnik after the fire in 1435, two of the most important buildings, the ''Rector's Palace