St Nicholas Chapel

Why it is worth your time

St Nicholas on Prahulje is the loneliest and most photogenic chapel of Dalmatia: a Romanesque building of the 11th or 12th century on a regular mound amid the fields between Nin and Zaton, with the toothed crown it received in Turkish times, when it served also as a watchpost. Tradition says that here, within sight of Nin, crowned Croatian kings showed themselves to the people after coronation, so the mound is called the coronation hill too; seven kings, says the story, seven views from the top. History and tradition cannot be separated here, and need not be: the chapel alone, in the grass, without fence or ticket booth, is one of the strongest images of the Croatian coast.

One reaches it on foot from the road in five minutes; the door is often locked, but one does not come for the interior, one comes for the whole, a stone cube with a dome on a green mound, the Velebit behind it. The best light is the golden hour: then the chapel lights up like a candle above the field. Join it with Nin into one story: first the smallest cathedral, then the coronation mound, half an hour that explains why this small region is called the cradle of the Croatian state.