| General Description : |
Omiš The town of Omiš is situated in the alluvial soil of the left bank of the mouth of Cetina river that in this part, cutting through the stone walls of the surrounding mountains, forms a canyon that opens into the continental approach to the sea. You can find such contrasts nowhere – by its location alone Omiš is a veritable attraction. In Roman times there was the ancient settlement Oneum in the vicinity of the present town of Omiš, some hundred metres away from the sea in the hill, in the area of the hamlet Baučići (the village Borak). Nowadays the traces of the ancient times can be seen from the later erected houses built partly from the Roman chiselled stone. The whole area has not been sufficiently investigated but what was found - stone tablets with inscriptions, scattered capitals, stone dishes, tombstones, lamps, money and chiselled stone blocks – all of these echo the name of Oneum. This is where the oldest written monument of Omiš originated from – actually a fragment of the inscription from the time of the Roman emperor Claudius, the time when the Roman province of Dalmatia was ruled by his governor Publius Anteius Rufus; the tablet was made in the year 51 A.D. At the beginning of the 7th century, at the height of the Great Migration, the ancient Oneum was completely erased from the surface of the earth. With the extinction of the Roman rule and the arrival of the Slavs piracy experienced a great breakthrough. This was particularly the case after the destruction of the medieval Croatian state took place (in the year 1102) when the ventures of the corsairs from Omiš were registered in the records from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. In the safe-keeping of the Montenegrin Maritime Museum in Kotor there is a copy of the agreement on peace and non-attacking on the sea from the year 1167 drawn up between Omiš and Kotor, signed by Nikola Kačić as the representative of Omiš and Vito, the count (Latin comes) of Kotor. The agreement refers to the ships entering and exiting the Boka Kotorska Bay on the line from Molunat to Trieste. It is a sort of a special form of written bond of the Omiš citizens promising not to attack merchant ships from Kotor, and the bond binds their successors all to the ninth generation. The church of St. Peter’s on Priko in Omiš was first mentioned in documents in the year 1074 at the time of the rule of King Slavac. At that time the church had a great significance, particularly owing to the fact that there was probably the Benedictine monastery located nearby. We can assume that on its ruins the Franciscan monastery of the Bosnian brothers was founded there at the end of the 16th century. The Archbishop of Split, Pacifico Bizza, after the festive high mass in the Church of St. Michael’s in Omiš, opened the Illyrian seminary (Seminarium Illyricum) in “Priko above Omiš” on February 15, 1750. After Ladislas of Naples through a deed of purchase in 1409 sold all his rights to Dalmatia to the Venetian Republic, Venice ruled the whole coast to Omiš up to the year 1420, and the Venetian governor with his military crew came to Omiš in 1444. All the existing town churches were built in the course of that time. On the side doors of the parish church of St. Michael’s there is a Latin inscription telling us “that the narrow space of the old temple was widened due to the unity of the citizens”. The beginning of the building of the church is recorded as the year 1603, and it was consecrated in June 1629. The bell-tower was built in the 18th century. The Church of the Holy Spirit, built in 1685, was completely repaired and restored in the past five years. It is raised a few metres above the level of the main street and separated from the small Church of St. Rocco’s by a stone staircase above which the tower of the town clock is rising. The Church of St. Jerome in the area of Smokvica originates from the same time; however, it has been almost entirely and ruthlessly devastated. There are two churches situated on the old town graveyard: St. Luke’s Church, built in 1618 was the mausoleum of the Family Drašković-Bonitia, and the larger, central Church of St. Mary’s, built on Early Christian foundations. The church on the new town cemetery on Vrisovac dedicated to the Holy Cross was built in the mid sixties of the past century. The Church of St. Stephen in Borak, the settlement in the suburb of Omiš, is situated on the hill Boračka Glavica, to the east of the hamlet Lelasi; it was first mentioned in the year 1590. In the garden of the family Radman there is the Chapel of St. Franciscus from the 17th century. In the year 1998, on the right bank of the river Cetina, the new parish of the apostle St. Peter Priko – Omiš was established, and at the moment there are preparatory works continuing for the building of a new church that has not yet been given the name of its patron saint. The Franciscan monastery in Skalice in Omiš was founded in the year 1715. The valuable town coat of arms (Latin cross and spiked mace) has been inherited from the times of the Venetian rule of the town of Omiš which was called Almissa when under Venice. The coat of arms was most probably created in the 15th century and belongs among the oldest Croatian coats of arms; it is heraldically very interesting and beautiful. The cross here is not only the symbol of Christianity but first of all the sign of credibility. The spiked mace is the symbol of battle. This means that the symbolic meaning of the Omiš coat of arms is the defence against the Ottoman’s attacks, the essential preoccupation of people at the time of its origin. The Omiš coat of arms represents an exceptionally valuable, genuine vestige of the past that has for centuries symbolized the communal independence of the town of Omiš. In the second half of the 15th century the Ottoman danger was increasingly evident. Though the Ottomans arrived in the immediate hinterland of Omiš the town itself never fell into their hands. When the Ottomans had to leave the fortification Zadvarje for the first time in the year 1646, the danger of the Ottomans for Omiš had practically ceased to exist. The Venetian rule of Omiš had continually lasted for 353 years (from 1444 to 1797) and it definitely represented the period of the attachment of the town to the Mediterranean cultural circle. The town walls and the majority of the fortifications were built in this period. Venice acknowledged local autonomy and certain benefits to Omiš. After the collapse of the Venetian Republic in 1797, on account of the decision of the new ruler, the Austrian emperor Francis II, local self-management and certain benefits as the rights of the citizens of Omiš were acknowledged. Following a new war between Austria and France and the peace agreement concluded in Pressburg (on December 26, 1805) Austria lost Dalmatia. The following French era did not last for long because Napoleon’s soldiers were forced to withdraw as early as the year 1813. The Austrian rule was again established in Dalmatia and it lasted all through to the end of the First World War after which the new Yugoslav state was established in 1918. In the same way as Omiš was substantially economically and socially defined by its geographical position, so the same fact gave the direction for its future after the world wars. As the river Cetina has considerable energy potentials, industrial activities continued developing in Omiš and its surroundings. This continued up the time of the establishment of Croatian independence in the year 1991, when the town shared the destiny of the country that was neither in terms of organization nor manpower sufficiently prepared for such a radical social change. This brought about the stratification and partial or complete destruction of many economic subjects that had been quite sound and reliable in the past. In the recent ten years or so the town of Omiš has considerably changed its social and economic identity. Nowadays, after the industrial plants have almost completely been silenced and the coast liberated from environmental contamination and factory chimneys pulled down, beautiful coastal localities are being offered to new investors in tourism. Old hotels are being restructured and new hotels and other tourist contents are being built. It seems as if Omiš is living its admittedly new, though still historical radicalism. |
Filip
