St Mark's Cathedral

St Mark’s Cathedral sits at the highest point of Korčula Town’s old town, and locals will tell you it’s the most important building on the island. Construction ran across the 14th to 16th centuries, mixing Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance work by local stonemasons and Italian craftsmen — the oldest surviving parts are the three Romanesque apses and the lower section of the bell tower, which actually predates the cathedral itself and once served as the town’s public clock.

The main portal is the work of Bonino da Milano, carved in 1412, showing St Mark flanked by lions. Look closer at the facade and you’ll spot some odd details for a church: a squatting Adam and Eve, a two-tailed mermaid, and — for reasons nobody fully explains — a carved elephant on the gable cornice.

Inside, two paintings are attributed to Tintoretto: an altarpiece behind the main altar and an Annunciation beside the altar of St Anthony. The adjoining treasury museum, founded in 1954, holds a 1431 polyptych by Blaž Jurjev Trogiranin, one of the more significant names in Dalmatian Gothic painting.

You can climb the bell tower, completed in 1483 and standing about 30 metres, for a decent view over the old town’s rooftops and out to the channel. Korčula itself is a regular stop on Adriatic sailing routes, and chartering a gulet from Dubrovnik is one of the more straightforward ways to fit it into an itinerary.