Church of St James, Pitve

In Pitve, in the municipality of Jelsa on the island of Hvar, on a picturesque hill between old and new Pitve, stands the parish church of St James. The village is one of the oldest on the island, settled already in the Illyrian period.

The first parish church in Pitve is mentioned in 1452 on the same site. It was dedicated to All Saints, and one side altar in the new church is dedicated to them. The visit of the apostolic visitor Augustin Valier in 1579 records the church of St James with two altars; it is not clear whether this was a new building or whether the old one simply changed its patron. The present church was built in 1878 on the site of the old one, and consecrated in 1889. It is single-nave, longitudinal, with a square apse and a sacristy on the south side, 11 metres wide and 26.5 metres long. It is a fine example of historicist architecture, consistently built in the late Gothic style.

The church is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-6582.

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).