Đakovo Cathedral

Đakovo is a small town on flat Slavonian farmland with a cathedral out of all proportion to it: a red brick basilica whose twin towers rise over eighty metres and are visible across the plain long before you arrive. Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer commissioned it in the 1860s and it took until 1882, built to Viennese designs in a Romanesque revival style, with an interior of vaults and walls covered in painted biblical scenes. The town also holds a state stud farm that has bred horses since 1506 and Lipizzaners since the first were brought from Lipica in 1806, a short walk from the cathedral and open to visitors by arrangement.

History

Plans for a new cathedral to replace the modest, baroquised medieval church behind the Bishop's Palace go back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but money ran short. Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer took the project up in the early 1850s with the Viennese architect Karl Rösner, whose first design of 1854 was dropped for lack of funds and a change of style; Rösner produced two more designs in 1865, and building began on the third in 1866. After Rösner's death in 1869 Friedrich von Schmidt took over as chief architect in September 1870 and saw the work through to the consecration in 1882, helped from 1876 by Hermann Bollé on the furnishings. Strossmayer meant the frescoes for the Nazarene painter Johann Friedrich Overbeck, who left only cartoons before he died; Alexander Maximilian Seitz and his son Lodovico painted them, partly from those drawings, and the Croatian sculptors Vatroslav Donegani and Ivan Rendić made most of the altar sculpture. Passing through on his way to a post in Bulgaria, the future Pope John XXIII called it the most beautiful church between Venice and Constantinople. Strossmayer is buried in its crypt (Wikipedia, Đakovo Cathedral).

What to look for

• The twin brick towers - over eighty metres, the landmark of the whole Slavonian plain.
• The painted interior - vaults and walls covered with dense nineteenth-century biblical scenes.
• The crypt - the bishops' burial chamber beneath the sanctuary.
• The Lipizzaner stud farm - the state stud in the town, breeding the white horses since 1806.

When to go

Spring and autumn are comfortable; the plain is hot and still in high summer. The cathedral is open daily outside service times and takes about half an hour. Stud farm visits usually need arranging in advance and work best in the morning. Đakovo's embroidery and folklore festival in early July fills the town for a weekend.

Good to know

Đakovo is a quiet provincial town with little else for visitors and no real reason to stay overnight. The interior painting is dense and dark, and after the exterior it disappoints anyone hoping for something lighter. Buses from Osijek exist but are infrequent, so a car helps. There is no admission charge and correspondingly few facilities.

Nearby

Osijek and the Tvrđa quarter are forty minutes north, with wine hills in the country around the town.

Key facts