Church of St Catherine

Why it is worth your time

The Church of St Catherine of Alexandria is Novalja's spiritual centre and the calm counterweight to the summer bustle of the waterfront: the parish church at the heart of the town, raised on ground that has carried churches since late antiquity, when Novalja with its three early Christian basilicas was one of the most important religious centres of the northern Adriatic. Today's building is more modest than that famous past, but precisely for that it is the town's true measure: single-naved, bright, with a stone front, a bell tower overtopping the roofs and an interior in which fragments of the older churches are kept as a reminder of the depth on which the place stands.

In summer the church lives at full rhythm, masses are in Croatian, and tourists are welcome with the usual courtesy: covered shoulders, a quiet step. Before the church opens the square on which the town gathers on feast days; on Catherine's day at the end of November Novalja celebrates its protectress. For the visitor this is a ten-minute station, but the one that returns depth to a resort: behind the beaches stands a town that has held the faith for sixteen centuries.