Šibenik (Croatian: [ʃîbeniːk] ⓘ) is a historic town in Croatia, located in central Dalmatia, where the river Krka flows into the Adriatic Sea. Šibenik is one of the oldest Croatian self-governing cities on the Adriatic, the capital and cultural, educational, administrative and economic center of Šibenik-Knin County, and is also the third-largest town in the Dalmatian region. As of 2021, the town has 31,115 inhabitants, while the municipality has 42,599 inhabitants.The seat is the Šibenik Diocese.
It was first mentioned on Christmas 1066 in a grant of Peter Krešimir IV, so it is also called "Krešimir's Town". Until the plague pandemic in 17th century it was the largest city on the entire eastern coast of the Adriatic. Šibenik was the de facto capital of the Socialist Republic of Croatia from December 1944 to May 1945. It is also significant as the place of foundation of the Croatian Navy.
The Cathedral of St. James is the most significant architectural achievement of the 15th and 16th centuries on the soil of Croatia. Due to its exceptional values, it was included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 2000, which was joined on that list by the Fortress of St. Nicholas.
History
Etymology
There are multiple interpretations of how Šibenik was named. In his fifteenth-century book De situ Illiriae et civitate Sibenici, Giorgio Sisgoreo describes the name and location of Šibenik. He attributes the name of the city to it being surrounded by a palisade made of šibe 'switches/twigs'. Some argue the name is of Illyrian origin, or derived from the family name of the Šubićs. Another interpretation is associated with the forest through the Latin toponym Sibinicum, which covered a narrower microregion within Šibenik on and around the area of St. Michael's Fortress.
Prehistory
Tarion was an ancient city located in the area between the Krka River in the north and Cape Ploče in the south, branching out along the coast. According to Pliny's notes, Tarion was the home of the Tarioti people, who were indigenous people. According to Pliny's notes, the Tarioti people mainly practiced a pastoral lifestyle, which can be determined by archaeological remains dedicated to the god Silvanus. Of course, in addition to their pastoral lifestyle, their geographical position allowed them to connect with other important cities of the time, such as Danilo, and to have a quality road connection, which is why it was important for the Romans themselves and the people who lived in the area.
Foundation and the Middle Ages
Šibenik is one of the oldest native Croatian towns on the Adriatic Sea. Not much is known about the earliest history of Šibenik, or the exact date of its foundation. According to current scientific discoveries, it is assumed that it was founded during the reign of Prince Domagoj in the 9th century. It initially developed as a fortress (castrum) with an older suburb (suburbium) in the Dolac area and a younger one on the eastern side of the castle, where the church of St. Chrysogonus was built in the 12th century, around which the core of the medieval town later developed. Šibenik belonged to the group of so-called Croatian towns, and it arose on a hill 70 m above the sea (today's St. Michael's Fortress). In the area of Šibenik, no traces of ancient urban tradition have been found to this day, but there are certain indications of life in late antiquity. It was first mentioned on Christmas 1066 when King Peter Krešimir IV, at a meeting of high state and church dignitaries, issued a document granting royal freedom and protection to the Benedictine Monastery of St. Mary in Zadar. It was at this time that Šibenik was strengthened, as part of the king's efforts to create a counterbalance to the Romanesque cities of the Byzantine theme of Dalmatia with the help of Croatian cities. After the battle with the Hungarian army at the Peter's Mountain in 1097 and the death of the Croatian ruler Peter Snačić, Šibenik recognized the rule of the Croatian-Hungarian king Koloman in 1105.
In the period after the loss of the national ruler on the Croatian throne, Venice, Byzantium and Arpadović fought for power over Šibenik continuously until 1180. In the 12th century, in the legal sense, it was a fortified settlement (castrum, oppidum), not a city (civitas), so its future efforts were directed towards achieving a city status, which would reach other Dalmatian cities (such as Zadar, Trogir and Split. In 1169, Šibenik was granted city status and the right to mint coins by the Hungarian king Stephen III. However, only after bitter disputes and a long struggle with Trogir did Šibenik manage to win its own diocese and in 1298 the Šibenik diocese was founded – the true status of a city in the Middle Ages. The Šibenik diocese was established by a bull of Pope Boniface VIII on 1 May 1298. The act of establishment itself took place in Šibenik on 28 June of the same year, and the papal bull was proclaimed and the first bishop, Fr. Martin Rabljanin, was consecrated. The cathedral church was the then Church of St. James the Apostle. It was destroyed by fire in 1380. Soon, people began to think about building a new, larger cathedral.
From the end of the 13th century, Šibenik recognized the rule of Croatian princes, first prince Domald (1200–1226), and then the princes of Bribir (until 1322). During the reign of the latter, Šibenik became the episcopal seat and gained a city status, but it lagged behind economically due to heavy taxes and obligations. This was the cause of the outbreak of a rebellion against the Bribirski government; then, with the support of the Republic of Venice, the city managed to fight off the rule of Mladen II., but eventually lost its autonomy and the right to freely elect a prince, who was elected by the Venetians from then on. The city again came under Angevin rule after the defeat of the Venetian Republic in the war with Louis I Angevin and the signing of the Peace of Zadar (1358). From 1390, together with other cities in Dalmatia (except Zadar), it recognized the rule of the Bosnian king Tvrtko I. Kotromanić, and at the beginning of the 15th century, of the Bosnian duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić and king Ladislav of Naples.
Unlike other cities along the Adriatic coast, which were established by Greeks, Illyrians and Romans, Šibenik was founded by Slavs. It was mentioned for the first time under its present name in 1066 in a Charter of the Croatian King Petar Krešimir IV and, for a period of time, it was a seat of this Croatian King. For that reason, Šibenik is also called "Krešimirov grad" (Krešimir's city).
Between the 11th and 12th centuries, Šibenik was tossed back and forth among Venice, Byzantium, and Hungary. It was conquered by the Republic of Venice in 1116, who held it until 1124, when they briefly lost it to the Byzantine Empire, and then held it again until 1133 when it was retaken by the Kingdom of Hungary. It would change hands among the aforementioned states several more times until 1180.
The city was given the status of a town in 1167 from Stephen III of Hungary. It received its own diocese in 1298.
Under Venice
The city, like the rest of Dalmatia, initially resisted the Venetian Republic, but it was taken over after a three-year war in 1412. Under Venetian rule, Šibenik became in 1412 the seat of the main customs office and the seat of the salt consumers office with a monopoly on the salt trade in Chioggia and on the whole Adriatic Sea.
In August 1417, Venetian authorities were concerned with the "Morlachs and other Slavs" from the hinterland, that were a threat to security in Šibenik. The Ottoman Empire started to threaten Šibenik (known as Sebenico), as part of their struggle against Venice, at the end of the 15th century, but they never succeeded in conquering it. In the 16th century, St. Nicholas Fortress was built and, by the 17th century, its fortifications were improved again by the fortresses of St. John (Tanaja) and Šubićevac (Barone).
The Morlachs started settling Šibenik during the Cretan War (1645–69).
The fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797 brought Sebenico under the authority of the Habsburg monarchy.
Annexed by the French Empire and included in its Illyrian Provinces during the Napoleonic Wars, the town became (again) part of the Austrian monarchy after the Congress of Vienna. The compromise of 1867 brought it in the Austrian side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1918. During this Austrian period, it was the capital of the district of the same name, one of the 13 district captaincy in the Kingdom of Dalmatia. The Italian name Sebenico only was used until around 1871.
In 1872, at the time in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Ante Šupuk became the town's first Croat mayor elected under universal suffrage. He was instrumental in the process of the modernization of the city, and is particularly remembered for the 1895 project to provide street lights powered by the early AC Jaruga Hydroelectric Power Plant. On 28 August 1895, Šibenik became the world's first city with alternating current-powered street lights.
Habsburg Monarchy
With the collapse of the Venetian state, Šibenik came under the rule of the Austria in 1797. This was preceded by popular unrest led by the pro-Austrian clergy who were afraid of secularists and the bourgeois revolution brought about by the French occupation of the Venetian Republic, and saw all the former Venetian officials as enemies. In these riots in Šibenik, the entire family of the honorary French consul was executed, and most of the other nobles fled to the neighboring islands. In early 1806, the French army entered the city and Šibenik became part of the French Empire, and from 1810 of the autonomous Illyrian Provinces, when after many centuries "Illyrian" briefly became the official language. At the beginning of the century, construction of the road to Knin via Konjevrate and Drniš began, which was completed in 1802, and after the arrival of the French, the road network towards Split, Zadar and Rijeka was improved. The French governors were appalled by the backwardness of Venetian Dalmatia, so they tried to modernize agriculture in it, establish a school system, build the first hospital, an orphanage, implement anti-epidemiological protection of the population, and modernize the administration and judiciary. After Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat, the Austrian army conquered Dalmatia and entered Šibenik at the end of 1813.
Šibenik remained part of the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, as did the rest of the Kingdom of Dalmatia. The beginning of the second part of Austrian absolutist rule represented a period of stagnation in all areas of life. Austria raised strong border control towards Bosnia and defended caravan trade, maritime trade also declined due to the loss of sailing ships, and also due to Austria's lack of a naval strategy, which caused Šibenik to stagnate again. In 1839, the first signs of national awakening appeared, more precisely the Illyrian Movement, by two Šibenik Serbs, Božidar Petranović and Špiro Popović, who created a joint Croatian-Serbian front against the Italianization of Dalmatia. They were visited twice in 1841 by Gaj and Mažuranić. At the same time, among educated citizens, the autonomist and Italian current was even stronger and more widespread, seeing its idol in the Šibenik native Nicoli Tommase, who also became a minister in the government of the briefly restored Venetian Republic. It was not until 1848/49 that the political activity of Šibenik under Austrian rule became more strongly manifested, when a people's municipal assembly was briefly elected after a landslide victory over the autonomists. The Croatian national revival in the city grew stronger, and in 1851, ban Jelačić visited him, in whom the people placed their hopes that he would unite Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, and the city gave him a welcome bigger than when Emperor Francis visited in 1818, but on the eve of Bach's absolutism, Jelačić did not mention unification in his welcoming speech. During the dictatorship, all political life died down for a whole decade and all pro-Slavic ideas were banned, which allowed the re-strengthening of the autonomists who won the first elections in 1865. A particularly significant event for the further development of folk reproducibility occurred in 1866 when the National Slavonic Reading Room was founded, and unlike other cities, the people of Šibenik built the theater themselves in 1870 without the help of the government and the municipality. The turning point occurred in the elections for the Dalmatian Parliament in 1870, when the People's Party won a landslide victory in Šibenik and its surroundings. In 1872, the nationalists won the municipal elections and the following year established the first Croatian municipal administration with Ante Šupuk as mayor, who greatly contributed to the economic and communal progress of the city, which until then was the largest working-class city on the Adriatic. During his term, the Croatian language was introduced as the official language in the municipal administration.