Church of St John the Apostle, Savudrija

Why it is worth your time

The Church of St John in Savudrija is the parish church of Croatia's westernmost settlement and a simple stone building of the kind the fishing villages of this part of Istria have: one nave, a bell tower by the front, an interior without ornament apart from the altar and a few statues. There is no masterpiece in it, but there is what gets lost in larger churches: the sense that it was built for one particular community, the one that lived off the sea for centuries and asked St John for protection for those who worked on it.

The church stands in the village centre, a few hundred metres from the harbour and a kilometre from the lighthouse, and around it are stone houses with outer staircases and courtyards with vine pergolas. It is open around the masses and closed the rest of the time. For a visitor who came to see the lighthouse and the cape, this church and the village around it show what that lighthouse actually served: the fishermen who came back here.