Franciscan Church and Monastery of St. Anthony

Franciscan Church and Monastery of St. Anthony

Located on the north side of the Split peninsula, in the Poljud cove of the Kaštelan bay. The Archbishop of Split, Paul, built a church of St. Mary of Poljud around the year 1020. Ever since the middle of the 11th century, the church was managed by the Benedictine monks of the Monastery of St. Stephen on Sustipan, and in the 15th century the Benedictine monks were allowed to build a Monastery next to the derelict church. In the 16th century a cloister was made with a square tower on the west side as a part of the defence complex protecting the church and the monastery from the Turkish invasion, and in the 18th century a bell tower was added leaning onto the south side of the church. Among other valuables in this extraordinary complex, an altar polyptych should be noted, part of which is the oldest known depiction of Split, an image made by a Venetian master Girolama de Santa Crocea in 1549 showing the city as it lays in the hands of its patron St. Domnius. Even more interesting is the rare depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, whose character should not be shown according to Koran, on a painting by a Baroque painter Mihovil Luposignoli, as one of the 39 theologians debating over the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

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