The village of Škrip, island of Brač in Croatia

The village belongs administratively to the commune of Supetar in the county of Split-Dalmatia.

Škrip is the oldest locality of the island, its history going back to more than 5000 years, at the time illyrienne, well before Roman colonization. Škrip preserves the memory of the island thanks to its Museum of the island of Brač.

At the time Venetian, Skrip was named in Italian Scripea.

The village is located at an altitude of 250 m to approximately 3.5 km of the sea. It deals with the peaks of Mosor close to Split, on the other side of the channel of Brač.

One can arrive at Škrip by a picturesque road which goes down towards the village since Nerežišća and the plate from Vidova Gora; curving between the stone tumuli and the low walls, this road offers spectacular sights on the channel of Brač and the mountains of will riviera of Makarska.

Cemetery of the village one can contemplate a broad valley which extends from Postira and Splitska inside the grounds.

The village is particularly proud of its castle-forts of which one shelters a remarkable insular museum.

The walls illyriennes are visible close to the Western base of the tower of Radojković. From there, they extend on approximately 25 meters towards north where the enormous principal door was. Then the walls turn towards the east, where a small door was, whose memory is still preserved in the name of Vroca (vratca, the small door). The continuation of the wall extends towards the south, along the street of the village, to cliff of Kuka (the hook, the abrupt cliff). On the southern part the cliff is which is used as natural wall of protection.

These walls, that one recognizes with the massive size of the blocks of stone, were built on the Greek model of a cyclopean wall, which made think during a time that they were the work of a Greek colony, but of recent archaeological research showed that they are constructions illyriennes: Illyriens took as a starting point the methods of construction of the Greeks.

For the Roman period of the centers of life were established along the coast, while in the interior of the grounds a prehistoric tradition little influenced by the Romans persisted. The era of Roman peace, the “Pax Romana”, and the specific resources offered by Brač, in particular the excellent stone quarries, contributed to the formation of colonies along the coast. One did not discover traces of large colonies which would have had a statute and the character of a municipality: they were mainly small colonies developed in the vicinity of the careers, the vines or the olive groves. The bunches of buildings formed around the agricultural domains were known under the name of “villa rustica”. Roman vestiges of “villae rusticae” were discovered in Bol above Rat, in Bunje close to Novo Selo, Povlja and Žalu.

The career of Rasohe preserves the most important low-relief of antiquity on Brač: it represents Hercules carved directly in the rock. The low-relief was probably carried out at the end of the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th century, when the stone was extracted for the palace. Some other representations of the hero as some votive furnace bridges dedicated to Hercules (Héraclès) were found, because the soldiers and the stonecutters revered the worship of Hercules for his physical force. Votive furnace bridges of the Eastern divinities Mithra and Baal were also discovered; they testify to the presence on the island to soldiers and stonecutters come from all the Empire, in particular of the Middle East.

The foremen of the slaves and the noble ones of Škrip Roman set up sanctuaries with the pagan divinities of Jupiter, Héraclès, Mitra, Mercure and Liber; in Škrip, they built stone sarcophagi and other tombs for their families and themselves.

For the Romans, Škrip was the largest workshop of sarcophagi around the Eastern Adriatic. Throughout the village are scattered completed or unfinished sarcophagi, or fragments of sarcophagi used at various ends in the centuries which followed. Some sarcophagi are close to the southern wall of the strengthened castle of Cerinić. The lid of a sarcophagus is beside the Eastern wall of the castle; the second sarcophagus is embedded in the wall of the garden, on the right side of the way which skirts the northern wall of the castle. Another sarcophagus is across the path in the garden. Some tombs are dug in the rock, as that which is in the garden on the southern part of the place, where, beside the tomb of an adult man, is smaller fall intended for a child.

Many sarcophagi were completely destroyed; in other cases, people used their cavities to store oil, and the lids were used as feeding troughs. Many sarcophagi, without their bottom, were used to frame doors like, for example, on the small Saint Michael church which one can see on the close hill above Dol, in the south-east of Škrip.

The mausoleum rests directly on the old walls illyriens. It is about a funerary room of square form, with a barrel vault, made blocks of cut stones laid out regularly, with two large arches arched out of stone above the crypt. The entry of the funerary room is on the Eastern side. Under the staircase out of wooden there was a small opening which was used as exit for the people who had sealed the mausoleum of the interior.

It is probably the mausoleum of some noble Roman. But, according to the local legend, this mausoleum would have been the last place of rest of two noble Romaines, the wife of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, Priscilla, and his/her daughter Valeria, who as Christian women would have been hidden in Škrip because of their religious beliefs and would have died there.

The Sainte-Hélène church is the most recent monument of Škrip: the construction of the building baroque was started in the second half of the 18th century, in 1768, and was completed at the beginning of the 19th century. The Sainte-Hélène church has the most harmonious frontage baroque of the island of Brač.

The interior of the church conceals a rare example of a beautiful gilded furnace bridge and two original tables of furnace bridge of value, works of the eminent painter Venetian mannerist, Palma the Young person (Jacopo di Antonio Negretti, said Palma il Giovane, 1544-1628), raises of Titien and Tintoret: “baptism of Christ” and “Marie with the saints”. Two other works of the painter were flights in 1974 and were never found: “Holy Roch and holy Claire” and “Holy Jerome and holy Augustin”.

The popular tradition would like that holy Helene, the mother of the emperor Constantine, would be originating in Brač, but it is a ground for dispute between several villages (Selca, Škrip).

The Roman Emperor Constancy 1st, would have lost himself in this area whereas it drove out, and would have met the beautiful Helene, a simple young girl. The father of the young girl, a local shepherd, would have given refuge to the emperor in his modest residence and Helene would have mended her clothing torn by the wandering through wood. Constancy would have fallen in love from there and would have immediately taken it with him. Their son will become the future emperor Constantine. At the end of her life, Helene would have sought and found in Jerusalem the cross on which Jesus was crucified; for this reason, it is named holy Helene of the Holy-Cross (Sveta Jelena Križarica).

The chapel of the Holy Spirit adopts the shape of a basilica with three naves. The side aisles were added to the 16th century and the square vault, one century later.

Behind the cemetery, on the edge of the cliff where is drawn up a stone cross, opens a splendid panorama, with interesting sights on the interior of the island of Brač.

The northern wall of the castle is bored and decorated with a biforium (double window divided by a column) which offered a sight on the channel of Brač.

Among the most interesting objects of the Roman epoch, one notices two low-reliefs of Hercules, a divinity venerated for his force, especially at the Roman stonecutters and soldiers.

Part of an early Christian low-relief, representing a lamb under the cross, was used to enclose a court.

At the ground floor of the museum, at the top of wood steps, is the Roman mausoleum above which the defensive tower of the palace was set up.

Close to the entry of the museum the figurehead of the one of the ships of the hermitage of Blaca is which gained an unequal battle against an English corvette in the wearing of Split.

Škrip HR-21423 Nerežišća

Schedules of opening: the museum is open in summer, from 9 to 7 p.m., and with the request the remainder of the year (in the event of closing, to address itself to the semidetached house).

Telephone: 00,385 (0) 21 637092.

Tariff of entry: 12 kunas.