Dubrovnik Cathedral and Treasury

A cathedral has stood on this site since the early medieval period, with earlier Romanesque and later churches preceding the present building. The great 1667 earthquake that levelled much of Dubrovnik destroyed the earlier cathedral, and the present Baroque cathedral was built on the same site in the decades that followed, funded in part by the legacy of the Ragusan patron Stjepan Gradić. The cathedral became the principal church of the city and the seat of its religious life within the Republic of Ragusa, and the treasury accumulated reliquaries and sacred objects across the centuries, many connected with the veneration of Saint Blaise, whose feast on 3 February is the city’s great annual celebration. The relics preserved in the treasury are understood within religious tradition as the relics of the saints; their identification is a matter of faith and tradition rather than scientifically verified fact.