The church roof
It can be climbed, with a view over the inlet and town.
Carsten Steger — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Falk2 — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Falk2 — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Falk2 — CC BY-SA 3.0 de
The smallest town on Hvar and the strangest in shape: it sits on both sides of a **long narrow inlet** cutting into the land, its two banks joined by **small bridges** — which is why it is called «Little Venice» locally. But its most important structure is a single building: the **Church of St Mary of Mercy**, a **fortified church** — not a church with a tower beside it but a church that **is itself a fortress**: thick walls, gun loops, a crenellated defensive roof and a square tower. It was built that way after an Ottoman raid in **1571** burned the town, and the inhabitants decided their place of refuge should be their place of worship. The roof can be climbed today for a view over the inlet. The town also has a small **fishing museum** in an old press building, explaining the sardine fishery Vrboska lived on — it held one of the earliest canning factories on the Adriatic. Note: it is very small and quiet — an hour or two covers it, and it is usually combined with Jelsa or the Stari Grad Plain on the same day.
It can be climbed, with a view over the inlet and town.
Joining the two banks, and the reason for the local nickname.
The sardine story and the cannery the town lived on.
Vrboska, island of Hvar — about 25 km east of Hvar Town
Churches designed to be **a defensive building and a place of worship at once**: thick walls with no low windows, gun loops, a crenellated roof that could be manned, and a tower for watching. They exist in Dalmatia because of the **sea raids** of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Ottoman and pirate — on small coastal villages with no walls and no garrison. Their inhabitants had no time to flee to a distant castle, so they built the refuge in the middle of the village, and the only solid stone building there was the church. ⚠ The best known in Croatia is this one at **Vrboska**, with others on the islands and around Zadar. The same phenomenon occurs in **Transylvania** for similar reasons.
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