Church and Monastery of the Holy Cross, Arbanija

On the northern coast of the island of Čiovo, in the village of Arbanija in the municipality of Trogir, rises a Dominican monastery with the Church of the Holy Cross. It will interest visitors who like Gothic architecture and peaceful monastery complexes by the sea.

The monastery was built in 1432. The church is an elongated single-nave building with a rectangular apse and a pointed vault. To its left is a hospice whose ground floor is designed as an open loggia, with arcades of pointed arches on marble and stone half-columns. Above the ground floor, part of a painted wooden coffered ceiling has been preserved. Beside the cloister, on the east side, is the chapter hall, and on the west the refectory; the chapter ceiling is a valuable painted Gothic coffered tabulatum, and the refectory has a wooden Gothic ceiling. West of the monastery extends an enclosed garden with walkways, from which one went to the boat storehouse.

The church and monastery are a protected cultural property, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-3492, in the category of sacral and secular architectural heritage.

Photo: VitVit, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Data: Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Culture and Media), Open Licence; coordinates: Wikidata (CC0).