The cathedral
Renaissance and large, for a village with almost no people.
RomanM82 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Stefan.lefnaer — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Stefan.lefnaer — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Falk2 — CC BY-SA 4.0
A village of a **few dozen** inhabitants today — which two thousand years ago was a **city of some twenty thousand**. That collapse is the subject of the place. Osor stands at a singular point: **the channel dividing Cres from Lošinj**. And the channel is **man-made** — cut in antiquity, probably in the Roman period, through a narrow isthmus, turning one island into two and opening a **shipping passage** that saved sailing all the way round. Control of that passage made Osor rich: a bishopric, walls, a Renaissance cathedral, its own coinage. Then it ended, for accumulated reasons: **malaria** from the surrounding marshes, shifting trade routes, and epidemics. The city shrank century by century into the present village. The result today is strange: **a large cathedral, walls and palaces for a village with almost no inhabitants**, and fields with the exposed foundations of Roman buildings. Note: a **swing bridge** crosses the channel, opening twice a day for boats — road traffic stops while it does.
Renaissance and large, for a village with almost no people.
Dividing two islands and opening twice a day.
Exposed in the fields around the village.
Osor — about 30 km north of Mali Lošinj, at the Cres-Lošinj divide
The two islands are **joined by land** across the Osor swing bridge, so you can drive from northern Cres to southern Lošinj without a ferry — but the distance is large and the road slow and mountainous: from **Beli** in northern Cres to **Mali Lošinj** is about **80 km** and over two hours. ⚠ **The bridge opens twice a day** for boats (usually morning and evening) and traffic stops for around half an hour — check the times if you are heading for a ferry or a flight. ⚠ From the mainland: a ferry from **Brestova** to Porozina in northern Cres, or from **Valbiska** on Krk, or from Zadar direct to Mali Lošinj. ⚠ And Lopar on Rab connects to Krk by another ferry — so four islands can be linked without returning to the mainland.
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