Church of St John, Jelsa

In the southern part of the Jelsa bay, in the Vela Banda area on the island of Hvar, on a small square east of the main village square, stands the Baroque church of St John. It is among the most beautiful examples of Baroque sacred architecture on the island.

On the same site a smaller church already stood in the 15th century, whose traces can be seen in the wall of the south façade. It is assumed that a holy place existed even earlier, on the bare rocky ridge. The present building arose in the 16th century and is unusual for its polygonal ground plan, which was certainly influenced by the shape and size of the already formed square and the wish for the new church to be larger than the previous one.

The church is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-4872. It is located in the municipality of Jelsa in Split-Dalmatia County.

Photo: Falk2, 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).