Vrnik – the island where stone carving began in Dalmatia
- by croatiaweek
- in Travel
Have you heard of Vrnik Island just off the island of Korčula? This is where the stone carving roots of all Dalmatia lie.
Although this island’s rich past has faded, it is being revived through the “Written in Stone” project by students from Petra Šegedin Secondary School in Korčula.
“From here, the people of the island Brač learned to quarry stone. The Fabris brothers moved to Brač and taught the locals how to extract stone. There is a church dedicated to the Fabris brothers on Hum. I don’t recall the exact year, but this is where stone processing in Dalmatia began,” Vrnik resident Jadranko Foretić told HRT.
“Our stone is found all over the world – from the White House in Washington, which started construction with stone from Vrnik, the first two rows of stone and four twelve-metre columns. Hagia Sophia was repaired with Vrnik stone, as well as Stradun, the Rector’s Palace, the Church of St. Blaise, the Cathedral of St. James in Šibenik, the Hungarian Parliament Building, and the Vienna City Hall,” says Jadranko, who still preserves some of the tools he used as an assistant to the last stone carver on the island.
The students of Petra Šegedin Secondary School in Korčula have created the “Written in Stone” project, highlighting the stone carving history of the island. They won second place at the Festival of Excellence in Solin with this project.
“We combined tradition with modernity, reviving Vrnik and its heart – stone carving,” says Glorija Petković, a Croatian language and literature teacher at Petra Šegedin Secondary School.
“Our first goal was to honour the old stone carvers who lived and worked here, extracting stone that is unparalleled in the world. Our second goal, equally important, was to teach our students the importance of preserving the cultural and historical heritage and traditions of this island,” notes Ines Peručić Blitvić, a teacher at Petra Šegedin Secondary School.
“We created a booklet as part of the project, documenting Vrnik’s customs, language, some anecdotes about the quarry, stone extraction techniques, and more,” says student Eva Depolo.
“We visited Vrnik multiple times, met with the locals who shared various stories with us, and included all this in our film. We gathered videos of the quarries, churches, schools, and Vrnik itself and compiled them into one video,” student Marta Bakarić told HRT.
Today, Vrnik is home to only four people, down from four hundred in the past, all of whom worked with stone.
Church on Vrnik (Photo credit: Anto/CC BY-SA 3.0)
There were no fishermen or gardens; everything was sourced from Korčula. To ease the children’s commute to Korčula for school, they built a school on the island.
Today, the building houses a restaurant, with a classroom preserved on the upper floor as a reminder of the island’s past life. Despite having moved away long ago, all Vrnik residents return to the island in summer to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Škoja, their patroness.
Plans are underway to establish a stone carving museum, allowing visitors to delve into the history and discover the significance of stone to the life of Vrnik Island.
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