St. Lawrence's Cathedral

St Lawrence's Cathedral (Croatian: Katedrala Sv. Lovre) stands on the main square of Trogir's old town, on Croatia's Dalmatian coast. Construction began around 1213, on the site of an earlier church. The building's earliest, largely Romanesque phase was substantially finished by 1251, though work on the cathedral as a whole continued into the early 17th century.

The cathedral's main portal is the work of Master Radovan, a local sculptor whose name and the date 1240 are recorded in an inscription on the lunette. Carved in Romanesque style, it shows biblical scenes and figures from everyday medieval life, and rests on two stone lions supporting figures of Adam and Eve. It is considered one of the most significant Romanesque portals surviving on the Adriatic coast.

The bell tower took roughly two centuries to finish. Its lower, Gothic level was begun in the late 14th century by masters recorded as Matej and Stjepan; after Venetian bombardment damaged the structure in 1420, master Matej Gojković oversaw repairs. A second, Venetian Gothic level followed in the mid-15th century, and the top level, in Renaissance style, was completed in 1605 under Trifun Bokanić. The tower, topped with statues attributed to the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, reaches a height of about 47 metres.

Inside, the Chapel of Blessed John of Trogir was built between 1468 and 1482 by Nikola Firentinac (Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino) together with Andrija Aleši. It holds the sarcophagus of John Orsini, a Rome-born Benedictine monk who served as bishop of Trogir from 1100 until his death in 1111, surrounded by twelve statues of the apostles set in shell-shaped niches.

Taken together, the cathedral's successive building phases mean it is generally described as Romanesque-Gothic in structure with later Renaissance additions, rather than a single unified style. The building is not itself separately listed by UNESCO; it stands within the Historic City of Trogir, which was added to the World Heritage List in 1997 for its well-preserved Hellenistic street plan and its Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.

The bell tower's viewing gallery looks out over Trogir's rooftops toward the channel and the island of Čiovo, a stretch of water also visible from the deck during a Trogir gulet cruise.