Makarska Kacic Square

Kacic Square is the centre of Makarska in every practical sense: the town's cathedral stands on it, the main cafe terraces spill onto it, and almost anyone walking up from the harbour ends up crossing it. Formally it is Andrija Kacic Miosic Square, named after the 18th-century Franciscan whose bronze figure has stood in the middle of it since 1890. Behind the square rises Biokovo; in front of it, a few dozen metres away, is the water. That combination, a stone Dalmatian square wedged between a mountain wall and a sheltered bay, is most of the reason Makarska looks the way it does.

The Square and What Stands on It

Makarska sits on the Adriatic coast roughly 60 kilometres south-east of Split and about 140 kilometres north-west of Dubrovnik, in Split-Dalmatia County, with just over 13,300 residents at the 2021 census. The old town occupies a natural harbour enclosed by two peninsulas, Osejava to the south-east and St Peter's to the north-west, and Kacic Square sits a short walk back from the waterfront in the middle of it.

The dominant building is the parish church of St Mark, now the cathedral. Construction began in 1700 and the church was consecrated in 1756, although it was never entirely finished; the result is a restrained Baroque front facing the square rather than the sea. Opposite it stands a Venetian-era fountain from the second half of the 18th century, traditionally dated to 1775, which still runs with water off Biokovo. The rest of the square is stone houses, cafes and restaurants, and through the summer it doubles as an open-air venue for concerts, festivals and other events.

Who Andrija Kacic Miosic Was

The man the square is named for was born on 17 April 1704 at Brist, a village on the coast south-east of Makarska, and died on 14 December 1760. He entered the Franciscan order at sixteen at the monastery of Zaostrog, studied there and later in Buda, and was ordained a priest at Sibenik in 1728. From 1735 to 1745 he taught philosophy and theology in Sibenik as a regular lecturer, spent five years at the monastery of Sumartin on Brac, and then returned to Zaostrog, where he remained for the rest of his life.

His reputation rests almost entirely on one book. Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga, or Pleasant Conversation of the Slavic People, appeared in 1756 with 41 poems and again in a heavily expanded second edition in 1759 containing 137. Written in plain vernacular verse in the manner of folk singers rather than in the learned Latin of his other work, it retold the history of the South Slavs and their wars against the Ottomans in a form ordinary people could memorise and recite. It became the most widely read book in the Croatian-speaking lands for well over a century, which is how a friar from a small coastal village ended up with a monument in the main square of the nearest town. He also published a scholastic philosophy manual, Elementa peripatethica, in 1752, and a chronicle, Korabljica, in the year of his death.

Rendic's Monument and the Mosaic That Waited Thirty-Two Years

The monument was erected in 1890 and is the work of Ivan Rendic, the sculptor from Supetar on Brac who produced a good deal of the public statuary of late 19th-century Croatia. It shows Kacic as a young friar in his habit, standing in contrapposto on a stone pedestal and holding a book, the emblem of the work that made him. Set above the pedestal's mosaic panel are a gusle, the single-stringed instrument of the epic singers he imitated, and a book, the two symbols of his craft.

The mosaic itself has the longer story. Laid out like a carpet on the south face of the pedestal, it carries the heraldic arms of the peoples named in Kacic's songbook, and the imperial authorities refused to permit it when the monument went up. It was added only in 1922, thirty-two years after the statue, once the empire that had objected to it no longer existed.

Makarska Beyond the Square

The town's recorded history runs well behind the square's 18th and 19th-century layer. A settlement called Muccurum existed in the Roman period on the harder ground of the Biokovo slopes, and the name Macrum appears in the acts of the church council held at Salona on 4 May 533, when a diocese was established here. The coast around Makarska fell to the Ottomans in 1499 and stayed under their control until Venice recovered it from 1646 onwards, with the position settled by 1684. French troops arrived on 8 March 1806 and stayed until 1813, after which Makarska passed to Austria until 1918.

A minute's walk from the square, the Franciscan monastery was begun in 1502 and extended over the following centuries with a new church, cloister and bell tower. Since 1963 it has housed a malacological museum, founded by the friar and botanist Jure Radic, with more than 3,000 shells from the Adriatic and further afield on display; it is an odd but genuinely good collection and the most substantial museum in town.

Makarska is also the hub of the Makarska Riviera, the roughly 60-kilometre stretch of coast running between Brela in the north-west and Gradac in the south-east, and the usual base for visiting Biokovo Nature Park, whose highest peak, Sveti Jure, reaches 1,762 metres directly above the town. With the mountain behind it and a sheltered harbour in front, the square and the old town around it fit naturally into exploring the coast by boat from Split.