St Michael Complex and Rustic Villa, Mijovilovac

At the Mijovilovac location near Pridraga, in the municipality of Novigrad in Zadar County, lies an archaeological complex where the Roman rural economy meets the early Middle Ages. A visitor can see here how one estate, over a span of eight centuries, received a completely new purpose.

The older structure is an ancient farming estate built at the beginning of the common era. The foundations of its walls have survived: an approximately square plan with four oblong wings around a central courtyard. It was enlarged in late antiquity and extended and altered in the Middle Ages. Beside the northeastern corner of the villa, in the 9th century, the Church of St Michael arose, with a vaulted trapezoidal porch. The church is a centrally planned building with six horseshoe-shaped apses arranged in a circle around a circular core, above which a drum rose. The apse walls are articulated by shallow lesenes, and the interior retains a floor of limestone and marble slabs.

The complex is a protected cultural property, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-4200.

Data: Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Culture and Media), Open Licence; coordinates: DGU (centre of the settlement).