VIDEO: Seven reasons to visit Kaštela 

(Photo: Ivan T/CC)

The town of Kaštela is located on the coast of the Bay of Kaštela and is the second largest town in the Split-Dalmatia County. It stretches over 17 kilometers and is specific because of the fact that it developed around 7 settlements – Kaštel Štafilić, Kaštel Novi, Kaštel Stari, Kaštel Lukšić, Kaštel Kambelovac, Kaštel Gomilica and Kaštel Sućurac – or around castles. 

A new promo film for the town, titled Seven reasons to visit Kaštela, has been released. The promo film, produced by Moonstone Production and Dalmatia Film Festival, in cooperation with the Tourist Board of Kaštela, is inspired by the legend of local lovers Miljenko and Dobrila. 

In Kaštel Lukšić, in the second half of 17th century, the aristocratic Vitturi family had a daughter, Dobrila, and Adalberto Rušinić had a son, Miljenko. The pair fell in love and were forced to meet secretly because of quarrels between their fathers over feudal rights regarding peasants. 

Eventually, their parents found about the affair and Dobrila was put under strict supervision, whilst Miljenko was sent to service in Venice. Soon after, Dobrila’s father, out of sheer spite, arranged the marriage of his daughter to Družimir, an elderly nobleman from Trogir. Miljenko was informed in Venice by a soldier from Lukšić and arrived in Kaštel Lukšić on the day of the wedding. 

At the very moment the couple were exchanging vows at the local church, had forcefully stopped the wedding. Dobrila’s father then confines his daughter in the nunnery of St. NIkola in Trogir and Miljenko was sent to a Franciscan monastery on the islet of Visovac on the Krka River, not far from Šibenik. The couple used every trick to escape and arranged to meet and the lovers from Kaštela eventually got married. After the wedding, Dobrila’s father, possessed by uncontainable hatred and desire for revenge, shot his son in-law dead with a flintlock pistol on the bridge in front of his castle on Brce Square in Kaštel Lukšić. He couldn’t cope with the fact that Miljenko won and that he would take his daughter Dobrila as his wife to her new home in the castle of the Rušinić family. 

A few months later, desperate Dobrila, crushed by grief, lost her mind, got sick and died. Her last wish was to be buried in the same grave with Miljenko in the little church of St. Ivan at Rušinac where on the gravestone is written: “Pokoj ljubovnikom” (Peace to the lovers). Beside the grave in Kaštel Lukšić still stands Dobrila’s authentic Vitturi castle, Miljenko’s castle Rušinić from the15th century and the old church from1530 where they were married.