Bersa Brothers Concert Hall
The main room of the Rector's Palace is its great hall, which used to be called the Town Hall at the time when the palace served a civic purpose as the seat of the town council. Over the centuries, the main hall was used for different purposes; a courtroom in the 16th century, city theater in the 18th century, a hall for games and entertainment in 18th ct, and concert hall in the 20th ct. As its functions changed, so did the Palace’s various names, from the municipal, court, governor’s, government, to vicarious palace, and finally Chamber of Culture.
The Great Hall of the Palace is mentioned in documents dating back to the 14th and 15th century that speak of sessions taking place at the palace, but also of its repairs. In the documents from 1352, there is the first mention of a town council meeting taking place at the hall of Rector's Palace (sala comitatis).
After World War II, when the Rector's Palace became the Chamber of Culture, the Concert Hall became the site of various cultural and social events. In 1971, the hall was renovated and its management assigned to the Blagoje Bersa Music School, finally getting its name. The hall was completely destroyed during the 1990s Homeland War. It was restored within the project “Restoration and tourist valorization of the cultural and historical complex of the Rector's Palace”, RC.1.1.05-0117, approved for Structural Funds' grant of the European Union, within the Regional Competitiveness Operational Program 2007-2013.
The implementation of the project began on October 2, 2014, and the program was inaugurated in early 2017, marking a new beginning for the Bersa Brothers Concert Hall as the center of Zadar's musical life. During the Zadar Concert Season, the hall hosted performances by many renowned artists: Andreas Scholl, Edin Karamazov, Katarina Livljanić, Lovro Pogorelić, Matija Dedić, Petrit Çeku, Zoran Dukic and many others.
Providur’s Palace
Roman Forum
The Forum was the main square in Iader, a Liburnian city built in the imperial period of the Roman Republic according to the rules of classical town planning. It represents a very developed example of the forum complex, and is one of the most important among the Adriatic ancient cities. The inscription with the name of Augustus proconsul for Illyricum, Tamfil Vaale, carved on the well of the Forum, testifies that the complex construction was started as early as the second decade of the 1st century BC. In the period of late antiquity, the foundations of Christian buildings were laid. They later developed into an episcopal complex with the basilica and annexes, and were joined by the rotunda in the Early Middle Ages, eventually destroying the complex of earlier erected buildings. In the course of history, the whole complex was reduced to rubble and the Kampa was built in its place, a medieval square with a Renaissance cistern. The ravages of the Second World War turned this complex into a heap of rubble. When this was removed, it became possible to carry out research on the remains of the ancient buildings and on the square itself.
St Chrysogonus’ Church
The church and the bell tower are the only preserved parts of the formerly large Benedictine abbey whose foundations were laid in the early Middle Ages. The basilica itself is a Romanesque building erected in the same period and with the same artistic forms as the cathedral. It was consecrated by the first archbishop of Zadar, Lampridije, in 1175. The basilica and the cathedral, taken as a whole, represent a crown example of Romanesque art in the architectural heritage of Dalmatia. Many important documents ant written works of art were recorded in the course materials bookshop of this abbey, including, among others, the works of art containing notated music writings, a gradual from the 1st century, an antiphonal from the 14th century, a book of rites from the 15th century, the missal of the abbot Venier, etc...
St Donatus Church
Church of St. Donat used to be a residential chapel within the Episcopal complex. A legend ties its construction to St. Donat, the 9th-century bishop of Zadar. Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus makes mention of the existence of the temple in the first half of the 10th century. In his book On the Governance of the Empire, he succinctly describes its vaults and staircase leading to the matrons, and the original titular church of St. Trinity. Results of conducted research indicate the possibility of its spatial nucleus being built based on the idea of a free-standing rotunda at the end of the 8th century, which was extensively expanded in the 9th century into a complex rotunda and upgraded with a matroneum (gallery) upstairs and built extensions around its center. A wing of the bishop's palace was also added at the time, with a direct connection to the temple. The church was named after St. Donat only in the 15th century. The church was desacralized in the 18th century and has been gradually losing individual segments, first the inventory and the floor which was lowered to the level of the sidewalk of the Roman Forum below the rotunda, and then the built extensions, without which the church became no more than a torso of a building missing much of its south side. The west side, in front of the entrance to the temple, features a lobby, a long narthex covered with a sloping vault that bears the upper part of the staircase toward the matroneum.
On the inside, the space remained preserved in its original harmony as envisioned when it was first built in the 9th century. It consists of a central circle and a ring-shaped ambulatory with three radially situated apses, which on the east side form the shrine of the church. Its perimeter also features three doors, the main one facing the sanctuary, one on its lateral left and one on the right. A row of windows features alongside the wall with the apses, and the high niches embossed into the thickness of the outer walls shape its mass into a harmoniously sequenced circular mantle, with the apses’ curves enclosing the temple space. A series of six powerful built pillars and an elegant tribelon resting between them on two monolithic pillars in front of the sanctuary form an impressive row that is also repeated at the matroneum level, above which rises a circular tambour mantle covered with the wooden beam of the roof structure. A staircase that was added alongside the north side of the outer wall curve leads from the shrine to the matroneum. Even the Byzantine emperor described it as having a snail form. At the top of the staircase is a lobby which is also the entry into the matroneum, its shape running parallel to that of the lower space, with a circular ambulatory and three apses, but also further into the built extensions with which it is connected by double aisles on the south and north sides of the ambulatory.
On the whole, the St. Trinity Rotonda is truly a unique building in the general heritage of the early Middle Ages, a temple intertwining the elements of Byzantine and Carolingian architecture, whose inspiring simplicity of its base structures, as spoken in the language of architectural skill, bears witness to the bivalent cultural tradition of Zadar and Dalmatia on the threshold of Europe. The Rotonda is the crown witness to the architecture of the period in the Adriatic. At the same time, it is an exceptional acoustic space, a building inside of which the whisper of a voice and the gentle sound of musical instruments are clearly understood. Adding to that its aformentioned architectural value, the Rotonda truly is the best possible choice for the venue of such a special festival of early music, as was demonstrated by some of the unforgettable early music ensembles (Hortus musicus, Pro cantione antiqua, Trio Spencer, La Maurache, Perceval, Dialogos), as well as other concert programs that have been taking place in Zadar for decades, and which have become a representative artistic manifestation of the Croatian culture in their own right. (dr. Pavuša Vežić)
St Nicholas' Church
The monastery and Church of St. Nicholas was first mentioned in the 11th century; the original church was demolished in the 14th century when the city walls of Zadar were being built, and because of this proximity to the wall, the church was later renovated with an unusual north-south orientation.
The church was repeatedly modified and used as a military hospital, only to experience its complete ruin and collapse in the 20th century. It was salvaged in 1988, with full renovation starting in 2020.
