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Construction
Construction of Zagreb Cathedral
cathedral in the town of Zagreb
- 1093
- Europe
Construction
cathedral in the town of Zagreb
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Zagreb Cathedral (officially the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saints Stephen and Ladislav), is a Catholic cathedral in Kaptol, Zagreb. It is the tallest sacral building in Croatia and the most monumental sacral building of Gothic architecture southeast of the Alps.
The original cathedral was completed in 1217 in Romanesque style, but it was heavily damaged during the Tatar invasion of 1242. Over the following centuries, it was rebuilt and expanded in the Gothic style, becoming an important religious and cultural center. The cathedral suffered another major disaster during the 1880 Zagreb earthquake, which destroyed large sections of the building. A comprehensive restoration led by architect Hermann Bollé transformed it into the impressive Neo-Gothic structure seen today, with its two iconic twin spires, each rising to a height of over 108 metres.
The church is one of the most important symbols of Zagreb and Croatia, and in 2013 it entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of Croatia. It is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and to king-saints Stephen and Ladislaus. The cathedral is typically Gothic, as is its sacristy, which is of great architectural value. Its prominent spires are considered to be the most notable landmarks of Zagreb as they are visible from most parts of the city. The cathedral is 108.4 meters high, making it one of the tallest churches in the world. One of its two spires was damaged during the 2020 Zagreb earthquake, upon which the Cathedral went under reconstruction, and as of 2026 is still under reconstruction.
Judging by the archaeological finds (a Roman tombstone from the 1st - 2nd centuries AD, and jewelry from ancient Croatian graves that appears from the 8th to the 11th centuries), it is likely that the settlement in the area of today's Kaptol existed long before 1094, but the written history of Zagreb and its cathedrals begin to be counted from that year. After the death of the Croatian King Zvonimir (+1089), and due to the now legendary Croatian discord, the Hungarian king Ladislaus I of Hungary established power in Slavonia by military force and, with the intention of limiting the political and ecclesiastical autonomy of Croatia, founded the diocese of Zagreb (which stretched from Senj to today's eastern borders of Croatia), which will move the focus of political activity from the south of Croatia to the north (until then, the entire Croatian kingdom of Dalmatia and Slavonia was in the single Archdiocese of Split).
In 1094, Ladislaus I chose one of the already existing churches in the old Croatian settlement on today's Kaptol as the seat (cathedral) of Bishop Duha in the newly founded diocese of Zagreb, subordinate to the metropolis (archdiocese) in the Hungarian capital Esztergom (40 km north of today's Budapest). Political reasons forced Ladislav to hastily choose one of the existing churches, which was obviously not adequate for the cathedrals of the time, so the new cathedral began to be built on Kaptol around 1102, and already in 1175 the Zagreb bishop Prodan was buried in it. In the Zlatna Bula (Golden Bull) and the gift book of King Andrija II (1217), this new Zagreb Cathedral is also mentioned. The appearance of that first, real Zagreb Cathedral or "pre-Tatar cathedral", which collapsed almost to the ground in 1242 in a fire started by the Tatars on their way through Zagreb, can only be reconstructed based on the image on the oldest seal of the Zagreb Chapter from 1297, and its mirror copies of the seal from 1371, on which the king of St. Stephen, kneeling, shows the Cathedral to the Virgin. Those were the last years of the independent Croatian kingdom, and the Diocese of Zagreb was subordinate to Ostrogon until 1853, when it was raised to the rank of archbishopric.
The Bishop's Kaptol and the artisan-trade Gradec only merged into the single city of Zagreb in 1850. In 1093 when King Ladislaus I of Hungary (1040-1095) moved the bishop's chair from Sisak to Zagreb, he proclaimed the existing church as a cathedral. The Kaptol church settlement was fortified with a solid wooden fence (palisade) only after the invasion of the Tatars (1242). The building was destroyed by the Tatars but rebuilt by bishop Timothy (1263–1287) a few years later. But as early as 1387, during the civil war between supporters and opponents of King Sigismund, the wooden fence was torn down, by order of the king, by the residents of Gradec. Due to the panic that prevailed one September night in 1469, when the Turks from Bosnia came to the Sava near Zagreb and gave up their attack on the city because the swollen Sava flooded the surroundings of Zagreb due to heavy rains, Bishop Osvald Thuz started building real defensive walls with towers around of the entire Kaptol settlement. The walls were completed around 1478. The medieval fortress that surrounded the entire Zagreb episcopal city of Kaptol, with its towers, was partially demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, and the remains can still be seen today in Zagreb's Kaptol, Ribnjak and Opatovina. Cardinal Tomas Bakač Erdődy (+1521), the administrator of the diocese of Zagreb and the archbishop of Ostrogonia, built a fortress with ramparts and six round and one square tower around the cathedral itself. The tower in the middle of the ramparts in front of the cathedral's facade is named after him. His relatives and heirs became one of the most prominent Croatian families.
Construction on the cathedral started shortly after his death and was finished in 1217 and consecrated by king Andrew II of Hungary. The first Zagreb cathedral, that one-nave pre-Romanesque church that art historians call "Ladislav's Cathedral", was probably located on the site of today's southern nave of the cathedral, because parts of the foundation were found there, and the remains of frescoes from that time were discovered on the southern and northern walls of the apse.
Bishop Timotej (+ 1287) started to rebuild the damaged "pre-Tatar cathedral" from the ground up, which is why some call it "Timothy's cathedral". It was completed only in 1510, and Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer (+ 1905) said about it:
- "The Table Church of Zagreb, built in the Gothic-Italian style, was once in its original statue a true landmark of the city of Zagreb".
During his lifetime, Timotej built a new eastern part of the church – three polygonal apses in early Gothic style, of which the middle (or main) one is larger, hexagonal and elongated towards the east, and its vault is higher than the vaults of the apses in the southern and northern aisles. Today, it is almost half of the eastern part of the cathedral. He also built a sacristy (Timothy's sacristy) along the outer wall of the northern nave. The cathedral holds a treasury (riznica) that include various metal vessels, liturgical vestments, and liturgical books collected during various periods of its history. Among these objects most notable are:
The apsidal space of the sanctuary was decorated by Timotej with a series of 33 canonical seats placed in the stone recesses of the apse. Timotej built the sacristy in a transitional Romanesque-Gothic style: the ribs of the vault flow into the key (capstone) of the vault of a circular concave shape. The paintings on the vaults and the wall of the sacristy were painted in the second half of the 13th century, and are the oldest in northern Croatia. Over time and various renovations, the recesses were walled up, but they were found and restored by Hermann Bollé, and today in their niches there are stone tablets with a list of all Zagreb bishops and archbishops (67 bishops and seven archbishops, five of whom were cardinals). The northern apse was completed in 1275, and in it Timotej consecrated the altar of St. Ladislav, and in 1284 he completed the southern apse with the altar of St. Mary the Queen. The white stone slab with three stylized crosses, whose shape resembles similar ones from the 11th and 12th centuries, is the original fragment of the altar of St. Mary the Queen from 1284. Bishop Timotej was buried here in 1287. Albrecht Dürer painted couple of his paintings for cathedral. After Timotej's death (+1287), construction continued only in 1344, when the Croatian ban and bishop Stjepan III Kanižaj (+1374) builds a new central and northern nave. Work on the cathedral is progressing slowly. Around 1400, during the time of Bishop Eberhard (+1419), the middle and northern and to some extent the southern nave were completed, and by 1433, Bishop Alben (+1433) completed the southern nave and the lower parts of the two bell towers in the Gothic style. Thanks to the efforts of Bishop Thuz (+1499), the cathedral was richly equipped with altars and paintings, and Dürer's triptych of the Passion of Christ was placed on the altar of St. Mary the Queen in the southern apse. The most popular reading of the Middle Ages, along with the Bible, is the bestiary or medieval natural history with a list of plants, animals, demons, dragons and other mythological creatures, which, according to popular belief, were given magical properties by God. The mysticism and symbolism of these beings became part of the artistic equipment of cathedrals, and Gothic cathedrals in France (e.g. Chartres Cathedral) were especially richly decorated with them. The Zagreb Cathedral also has such unusual characters. All these unusual creatures and monsters actually together guard and defend God's house on earth from evil forces. Through the efforts of Bishop Thuz (+1499), the cathedral was richly equipped with Gothic and Renaissance altars and paintings, and by 1510, equally high Gothic mesh vaults and roofing were completed in all three naves.
After the interior of the cathedral and all the valuable legacy of Bishop Thuz burned down in 1624, its decoration started again from the beginning. The construction of the southern, new, massive belfry-tower of the observatory with a dome was completed in 1644, and Bishop Vinković (+1642) changed the image of the entrance to the cathedral: he demolished the old Gothic portal and built a new one in the old Romanesque style.
The vault collapsed across the entire width of the cathedral in the great fire that ravaged Zagreb in 1645. Bishop Bogdan (+1647) signs a repair contract with the builder Alberthal, in which he demands, in the Baroque era, the repetition of the original Gothic forms in the renovation: "First of all, the bolt, column and chorus, or the gank, which were destroyed, are restored to the original zevzesma form, well, strongly and firmly to make from a good and strong stone..."
The next two centuries, up to the earthquake in 1880, were mainly marked by constant rebuilding and repairs of the interior of the church. In the 17th century, a single fortified renaissance watchtower was erected on the south side and was used as a military observation point, because of the Ottoman threat.
At 7 hours, 33 minutes and 53 seconds, on November 9, 1880, a devastating earthquake (6.3 degrees on the Richter scale) occurred in Zagreb, with the epicenter in the area of Zagrebačka gora (Medvednica). Material damage amounted to half of the then annual state budget. In the earthquake, the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (co-patron is St. Stephen the King), where at that time canon Franjo Rački (+1894) celebrated mass on the side altar, was also badly damaged. He described his impressions of the earthquake (November 5, 1880):
The cathedral was severely damaged in the 1880 Zagreb earthquake. The main nave collapsed and the individual tower was damaged beyond repair. The restoration-reconstruction of the cathedral in Neo-Gothic style was led by Hermann Bollé, bringing the cathedral to its present form. As part of that restoration, two spires 104 m (341 ft) high were raised on the western side, both of which are now in the process of being restored as part of an extensive general restoration of the cathedral.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Zagreb Cathedral”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.