St. Anthony Church, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia

4periandro 5:00 PM May 27, 2022

Cute and dearly nice church
St. Anthony church, in the Croatian city of Crikvenica, is a nice church which finds itself in an elevated position vis a vis the street level so that one needs to clime up a staircase to go into the temple. Its construction started in the thirties of the twentieth century under the architect Stjepan Rovešnjak's design, but the belfry tower was not finished until the first decade of the present one. It's a single nave church in modern style with some neoromanesque style elements, such as the portal, the eight arched windows above the entrance and the two at both sides thereof, as well as the arches inside supported by the pilasters on both side walls, and the largest and beautiful arch through which one must walk to accede to the chancel. The church light painted façade is quite sober. The entrance consists in a perspective portal formed of four decreasing semicircular arches, the three first ones resting on cylindrical columns with Corinthian inspiration capitals. Its nice to be looked at. The windows referred to are also flanked by their respective small pillars supporting their own arches whose design is in the same line as that of the portal columns. The two windows on both entrance sides have a grill, what isn't the case as far as the others are concerned. Inside it's very simply decorated, which isn't detrimental to its nice character. The walls up to a ledge above which the side windows are is light-blue painted, except the stated pilasters which are grey. The rest of the walls up to the ceiling are light-pink. The latter is flat and covered with dark brown rectangular wooden planks. Some artistic chandeliers with ball lights hang from it. In that church one feels an inner peace and an overruling calm fruit of the simplicity of the decoration, the brightness of the day light coming through the windows and the peacefulness of the place as the temple lies in a relatively narrow street with hardly any traffic. The high altar is also quite simple, It's basically made of marble and with no particular ornate design, the white being the predominant colour. In the middle of the left wall as one enters the temple, there is a side altar devoted to St. Anthony of Padua between two of the mentioned pilasters. It includes a pretty statue of the Saint. That statue is made of white marble and finds itself within a black marble structure which recalls that of a baldachin. It's a beautiful work of art. A curious thing in that church is that there is no pulpit. The belfry tower is really impressive owing to its height. It's square shaped and consists of five parts with two or three windows as the case may be, on each one of their sides. The tower is the same colour as the church façade with the exception of the roof, which is dark brown. The said roof is topped by a simple metal cross. This is visible from many parts of the city, particularly from the harbour, thus being one of Crikvenica landmarks. The visit of that church is recommended. In order to feel the peacefulness of the place it's advisable to sit down for a while in silence on a bench inside and try not to think about anything.

4Laurence G 5:00 PM Jun 28, 2017

Nice old church
Popped in for a quick visit to this fine old church as had read about it. Nice inside peaceful and easy to find