Church and Monastery of St Nicholas of Muster, Komiža

Above Komiža on the island of Vis, on a hill overlooking the Komiža bay, stands the monumental complex of the church and monastery of St Nicholas of Muster. The climb to it is rewarded with a view of the town and the sea, and the building reveals layers from the Romanesque to the Baroque.

The former Benedictine monastery was founded in the 13th century, with Romanesque fortifications. In the 16th and 17th centuries the church was extended and acquired a Baroque appearance, and the whole complex was protected by a bastion. The interior has five aisles that came into being through the merging of side chapels, and the wooden and marble altars and well-preserved tombstones stand out. The late Baroque bell tower above the main façade stands on a Romanesque tower. The church is built of finely worked white stone blocks, while the Baroque bastion is made of regular blocks of reddish breccia.

The complex is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-5861.

Photo: August Dominus, 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: DGU (centre of the settlement).