St. Nicholas Church (Split)

The St. Nicholas Church is a small Romanesque chapel on the wooded southeast slope of Marjan Hill in Split, Croatia, roughly two hundred metres above the Prva Vidilica viewpoint, with a view out over the harbour and the ships below.

According to local tradition the church was built in 1219 by a citizen of Split named Rako and his wife, who donated it to the Benedictine abbey of St Stephen on Sustipan. The Benedictines maintained the church for a period; afterwards it passed into the care of hermits, who lived on the hill and looked after the building until it was abandoned sometime in the 18th century. It has since been restored several times — recorded renovations date to 1919, 1950–51 and 1990 — and it is now looked after by the Marjan Hill park society.

The dedication to St. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and travellers, fits Marjan's long-standing role as a place of maritime devotion: the hill is scattered with several other small medieval churches and hermitages, and St. Nicholas's feast on 6 December is still marked in Split with a mass tied to the city's fishing community. For visitors who want to experience that maritime tradition directly rather than in stone, chartering a gulet from Split is the more direct route onto the same waters the church has watched over for eight centuries.