Two more historic sites in Croatia make the UNESCO World Heritage list
St. Nicholas Fortress in Šibenik and the historic defensive walls of Zadar are to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage list, reports vijesti.hr on 31 May, 2017.
The fortification walls of Zadar were built in the 16th century by the Venetians, allowing the city to fight off the incessant offensive attempts of the Ottoman army. Only certain portions of the walls are preserved to this day, including eight gates built by well-known renaissance architects such as Michele Sanmicheli.
Out of four Šibenik forts, St. Nicholas is the only one built at sea, on the island Ljuljevac at the entrance of the St. Anthony channel. The fortress was built in the 16th century and is one of the best preserved examples of defensive architecture in Dalmatia.
(St.Nicholas Fortress, Šibenik)
This is the second site in Šibenik to be protected by UNESCO, as the renaissance Cathedral of St. James made the list in 2000. As stated by UNESCO, the cathedral is “the fruitful outcome of considerable interchanges of influences between the three culturally different regions of Northern Italy, Dalmatia, and Tuscany in the 15th and 16th centuries”, making the remarkable edifice a “unique testimony to the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance period in church architecture.”
Croatia currently counts eight UNESCO-protected sites: apart from the cathedral in Šibenik, there’s the famous historical complex of Split with the Palace of Diocletian, the Old City of Dubrovnik, Plitvice Lakes National Park, the episcopal complex of the Euphrasian Basilica in the historic centre of Poreč, the Historic City of Trogir, Stari Grad on Hvar, and Stećci, the medieval tombstones graveyards located in central and southern Croatia.
