Church of St Peter, Vrboska

The church of St Peter stands by the sea in Vrboska, east of the present settlement. It is located in the municipality of Jelsa in Split-Dalmatia County. It is interesting because it is older than the settlement itself and was a reference point on the boundary between two areas.

It is already mentioned in the Statute of Hvar of 1331 as the boundary of the territories of Pitve and Vrbanj. It belonged to the Hvar nobles the Chranchisi (Hranotići) and the Piretići, who renovated it in 1469 after it had been demolished. The building from that 15th-century renovation has been preserved, a single-nave vaulted church with a square apse, built of small roughly dressed stone and covered with stone slabs. On the main façade are a simple portal and a niche with a copy of the statue of St Peter, the work of Nikola Firentinac from 1469. The original is kept in the parish church of St Lawrence. At the top of the gable is a slender masonry bell gable.

The church is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-4788.

Photo: Gampe, 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).