Archaeological Site and Church of Our Lady of Sita, Podstrana

The Church of Our Lady of Sita is located in the settlement of Stožac in the municipality of Podstrana, in Split-Dalmatia County. Beside the small church is a multi-layered archaeological site that shows how people lived in this place from late antiquity to the present day.

The name of Our Lady of Sita comes from a marsh plant that grows in the surroundings, called iuncus in Latin. The present Church of St Mary was built in 1954 on the site of an older, medieval church, which was demolished in 1944. This original church was probably built in the 11th century, and is first mentioned in 1129 in the charters of the Monastery of St Stephen under the Pines in Split. Investigations uncovered the remains of a rustic villa from the end of the 4th century: a larger room measuring 27 x 15 metres, a wall north of the small church six metres long, and two smaller rooms east of the entrance. In the late Middle Ages, on the ruins of the villa, a cemetery arose in which the inhabitants of Opaće Selo were buried from the 14th to the end of the 18th century.

The site is a protected cultural property and is entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-6978.

Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 hr, Wikimedia Commons.
Data: Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Culture and Media), Open Licence; coordinates: DGU (centre of the settlement).