Six-Lobed Church and Monastery of Manastirine, Islam Grčki

The Manastirine site near Islam Grčki, in the area of the Town of Benkovac in Zadar County, shows how religious building activity followed one another on the same ground through the centuries, from a pagan temple to a monastery.

The investigations uncovered a multi-layered site with the remains of buildings from the period from antiquity to the late Middle Ages, from the 1st to the 16th century. The Roman structures belonged to a pagan sanctuary. In the 5th century a smaller Christian oratory arose within them, and in the early Middle Ages, on the same spot, a pre-Romanesque church of six-lobed shape was built. In the 15th century a monastery complex was built beside this church. The layers of the site thus vividly show the changes in the purpose of one and the same space.

The site is a protected cultural property and is entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-1312.

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