The next stop on our little journey was Zadar. Zadar is Croatian city situated on Adriatic sea and is also the oldest continuously inhabitated city in Croatia. It was actually domiciled since ancient times. In this post, I would pretty much like to highlight the importance of the Saint Donatus Church so this post is going to be about it, not specifically about Zadar. It is the biggest Pre-Romanesque Church in Croatia. Pre-Romanesque period is the period in European art and architecture also called „Art of the Migration Period“ (Migration period is referred to the migration of the Germanic tribes mostly and the Huns). Exquisite ornamentation is one pronounced feature of this period. It is the binding period of Early Christian forms with Germanic ones.
The outer surface od the building is decorated with shallow lesene, also called pilaster strip. There are deployed windows betweens those lesenes and they have no particular order. In conclusion, Saint Donatus Church is the Symbol of the city of Zadar. It belongs to the most important and most famous European Pre- Romanesque Church. Because of the circular shape, called rotunda, church has its interested features and the three apses are symbolicaly linked to the original dedication of the Church to the Holy Trinity. The former belongs to the Byzantine form and the latter is the western style. Next stop... Coming soon!
Love, P.
0 Comments
On the day of november 4th, 2017., group of college students took a mini trip in some warmer regions of our beautiful country, Croatia. The class that linked us all together on this journey is called "Croatian fine arts". We started our journey, nowhere else but on the bus, at 7a.m. at the Lisinski stop in Zagreb - the capital city of Croatia. The ride was quite pleasent with two stops which was more than enough for the three and a half hour ride (usually when you travel from Zagreb to Zadar by bus you only get one stop through the whole ride).
As we crossed the bridge, we had to go through The Lower City gate, also called Bardelina. It was built between 15th and 18th century. Flag of the Republic Croatia is set on top of the gate. After walking for some time through beautiful streets of Nin, we visited one of the most popular city monuments, Church of the Holy Cross. Church is originating from the 9th century, and from the art of history perspective, that is pre romanesque Catholic church. It is also reffered as "the smallest cathedral in the world" although it does not containt the seat of a bishop of Nin today. What was quite important at that time was the orientation of the Church to the East. It was normal for Christians to turn to East during the prayers as East was identified with Christ. East's experience relies on the specifity of the daylight and on the position of the sun on the horizont. Small windows (in this case the window) on the east side (east apside) had the most important role because of the daylight; especially morning light, that had to emphasize the main axis of the building, giving her the blast of mysticism. Last stop in the city of Nin was the Musuem of Nin Antiquities. There you can see some pottery, decorative bowls, a lot of parts of the monuments and one monument, especially important is the Baptisment font of Višeslav which remains to this day a very important symbol of early Croatian history and people's conversion to Christianity, although there are some doubts in the latest research about whether Višeslav even was a Croatian duke. Next stop was Zadar where I actually lived for two years.
More about that part of the journey in the next post. Love, P. |
PatricijaHistory student with some Nikon on my hands. Still better at shots than (photo) shoots, tho. ArchivesCategories |