Trsat

Trsat (Italian: Tersatto, Latin: Tarsatica) is part of the city of Rijeka , Croatia. It has a historic castle or fortress in a strategic location and several historic churches. The Croatian noble Prince Vuk Krsto Frankopan is buried in one of the churches. Trsat is a steep hill, 138 m high, rising over the gorge of the Rječina river , about a kilometre away from the sea. It was strategically significant from the earliest times right up to the 17th century. Today it is a major Croatian Christian pilgrimage centre and home to a statue of Pope John Paul II who came to Trsat as a Pilgrim in 2003.

Important sights

Trsat Castle

It stands on the site of an old Roman fortress and was built in the first half of the 13th century by the Frankopan Princes of Krk. From the beginning of the 15th century it had a succession of lords, but was most often owned by the Habsburgs. In 1528 the Senj Capitan Gašpar Raab bought the castle and adapted and greatly strengthened it. Once the danger from the Turks had passed at the end of the 17th century, and fire arms had come into use, Trsat fortress was less important and was left allowed to fall into ruins, a process which was completed by an earthquake in 1750. Count Laval Nugent, Marshal and military commander of the Austrian coastal area, bought the ruins off the city, for an annual payment of one florint and had it restored in a Romantic Classicist-Biedermeier-style. He engaged the Venetian builder Paronuzzio and repaired the towers, decorated the interior and even built himself a mausoleum in the style of a Doric temple with four marble pillars supporting the facade. After his death his impoverished descendants deserted the castle and it once again fell into ruin until 1960. Since then it has been restored and enriched by the presence of art exhibitions, summer concerts and theatrical performances.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat

The Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat (Croatian: Gospa Trsatska) is a church on the flat area at the top of Trsat hill and the subject of a legend dating from the 13th century. In May 1291 Mary's house in Nazareth is said to have appeared here, then mysteriously disappeared later, to be discovered in Italy, in Loreto, where it still stands today as a shrine. According to one version the Holy House was brought from the Holy Land by the Crusaders. Prince Nikola Frankopan sent a delegation to Nazareth to measure the foundations as he had presumably only the stones in his possession and not the whole walls. He rebuilt the Holy House and the Frankopan Family then gave the Holy House to the Pope and, as the nearest Papal lands were near Ancona, the House was shipped there and placed in Loreto. Tradition ascribes the building of the church to Prince Nikola I Frankopan (1307-1343) in 1291; it was extended and added to by his descendants. In 1453 Prince Martin Frankopan added on a nave to house a painting of Mary , believed to have been donated by Pope Urban V in 1367 and thought to have been painted by Luke , and built a monastery alongside the church, occupied since 1468 by the Franciscans who are the guardians of the cult, which attracts many of the faithful. In 1644 a new nave was added to the church, which was extended and redone in Baroque style by the contributions of the members of congregation and Princes Frankopans. In 1691 the monastery was rebuilt after a fire and the complete reconstruction of the interior of the cathedral began, which was completed by the mid of the 18th century. In 1726 a new sanctuary above the crypt was built, giving the entire space luxury of ceiling decoration.

A new artistic contribution to the church was made by Vladimir Kirin (1894-1963), with five pictures on the greenish marble slabs with which the shrine is lined, and another by Ivo Režek (1898-1979) who portrayed the 14 stations of the cross in fresco technique. One of the guardians of the Trsat monastery was the outstanding Glagolitic expert and writer of books in Croatian, Latin and Italian, Franjo Glavinič (1585-1652).

The Trsat Stairway

It begins on the banks of the Rječina , beside a bank building, and leads up to the plateau at 138 m above sea level. There are 561 steps in all, and they were built for pilgrims on their way to the votive church. Work was started on them in 1531 by Petar Kružić, hero of battles against the Turks, who built the lower part of the stairway, later expanded to 538 steps. The Baroque entrance hall in the form of a triumphal arch was built in the first half of the 18th century, and the votive chapels on the level ground near the church by the steps, between the 15th and the 18th centuries, one chapel each century.