Sponza Palace, Dubrovnik

Sponza Palace is one of the prominent buildings in Dubrovnik, in Dubrovnik-Neretva County. It is situated in the historic core, and for visitors it is of interest because it links the architecture of the transition from Gothic to Renaissance with the history of the city's institutions.

It was built from 1516 to 1522 after a model by the Dubrovnik builder Paskoje Miličević. On the ground floor is a Renaissance porch, on the first floor a triforium and windows of distinctly Gothic character, while the windows of the second floor are Renaissance, rectangular. In the atrium a series of epigraphic monuments is kept, along with the famous Renaissance relief with the medallion of Christ by the master Beltrand Gallicus from 1520, with a Latin inscription by the Dubrovnik poet Ilija Crijević. The multipurpose palace survived the earthquake of 1667. It has been a mint, a customs house and a grammar school, and today it is the seat of the State Archives, one of the three richest in Europe, which preserves the written history of Dubrovnik and the Mediterranean.

Sponza Palace is a protected cultural property and is entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-5981.

Photo: Hedwig Storch, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Data: Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Culture and Media), Open Licence; coordinates: Wikidata (CC0).