| General Description : |
Krk In the Bay of Kvarner, the wondrous corner of the Mediterranean, under the protection of ancient Europe, the island of Krk is situated onto which, in historical waves, various tribes and peoples used to come and leave and where, before three full centuries Krk was born, “the most splendid town of the Krk citizens” (splendissimae civitatis Curictarum). The natural base, geographic position, climatic characteristics, the rich world of plants and animals, all these were favourable prerequisites that enabled man to survive in this space. Living in the Mediterranean and medieval atmosphere, appreciating and respecting the human convictions, Krk has inherited all the values of these cultures, their spirituality and temper that have been settling for centuries. Numerous traces of the rich history of Krk can be found on the dry-stone walls, Roman mosaics, small Old-Croatian churches, Glagolitic monuments, altar reredos, and paintings of Venetian and Croatian master painters. Every people, every century left its trace, some mark of material culture and spiritual impact. Nowadays this adds to the immeasurable value that gives proof to all the coming generations about the attainments and falls of our ancestors, the permanent and passing, the spiritual and material, about the people and cultures. History teaches us that the town of Krk was founded at the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 9th century B.C. by the lineage Curicta from the tribe of the Liburns. In the 1st century the town was a small Roman municipal town with all the characteristics of a Roman town. In the distant 7th and 8th centuries, the time of the mystical Middle Ages, it is the Slavs who arrived in these areas. In the atmosphere of the Mediterranean, the place of the permeation of various cultural influences, the Croats had begun their life in these areas and they ennobled their genuine strength and bravery with the Christian teaching and developed co-habitation with the indigenous people. The story of the past of the town of Krk takes us through the Byzantine, Frankish and Venetian rule and then, at the beginning of the 12th century the story of the princes of Krk started. Prince Doimo with his sons Bartol and Vitus started the saga about one of the most important noble family lineages of the Croatian past, about the family Frankopan, the title they received in Rome in the year 1430 from Pope Martin V. and the new coat of arms that gradually supplanted the first coat of arms with the hexagram star, the so called Krk stela. According to the legend, the princes of Krk called themselves Frangipani according to the brethren who doled out bread to the poor at a Roman square (from the Latin frangere panem – breaking up bread). The saga ended in the year 1671 in Wiener Neustadt with the execution of Fran Krsto Frankopan and Petar Zrinski. By this execution of the last male member of the Frankopans, their lineage was extinguished. Krk was the last of the Adriatic islands to be annexed to Venice. For almost three full centuries of the strange intermingling of the Serenissima, Venice, and Krk, this had left an abundance of traces. Interpreting its stormy and rich past, the town of Krk with its town centre is a living monument of culture and history. In its painstaking historical progress and growth, the town of Krk has been standing in the chosen place from times immemorial and is a proof of its permanent development. Reared in the cradle of civilization, Krk is by no means intoxicated by its past but by its personal desire for progress. Enriched by imaginativeness and wisdom of the times past, in harmony with the needs, intentions and inclinations of its population, Krk has become new, bigger, more modern, proving that it is ancient but at the same time a town very much alive. The story of the future of Krk has a contents as considerable as its past. The town of Krk is a treasury of special life qualities overfilled with charm, secrets and irresistible features, all of them proved by documents, works of art, archives, collections, churches, fortifications, streets and squares. Krk offers future and gives a gift of a spiritualized challenge of the past, it richly inspires spiritually and materially, wakes up in people something primordial, natural and yet above all human. |
Filip
