Church of St Anthony of Padua, Podstrana

In the village of Podstrana stands an unusual church of St Anthony of Padua, composed of two buildings that look like one. It also has details that bear witness to earlier centuries, such as an ancient relief and inscriptions written in old scripts.

Two correctly oriented single-nave buildings are joined, and in the 19th century the upper parts of the façades were connected by a wall with a bell gable with three bell openings. They are built of rubble stone and covered with two gabled roofs of stone slabs. Above the door of the north church, with a Bosnian-script arch, 1666 is carved, and in the south one an ancient relief of Silvanus and nymphs is built in. The side entrance on the south wall bears an inscription about the laying of the foundation stone in Cyrillic. The interior is plastered, in each nave stands a wooden altar from the 17th century on a masonry mensa, and beside the church is a stone bell tower from the 19th century.

The church is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-6856.

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).