Church of St. Stephen

The Church of St. Stephen is the parish church of Stari Grad at the island of Hvar in Croatia. It is devoted to the martyred Pope Stephen I. It stands at the japanese aspect of a small square, Trg sv. Stjepana, inside the historical centre of Stari Grad. It was constructed from 1605 onward at the site of an in advance church additionally dedicated to St. Stephen. The preceding church, built inside the ninth/tenth centuries, had served because the cathedral for the bishop of Hvar from 1147, whilst the diocese turned into set up, until 1278, while the island located itself beneath the protection of the Venetian Republic and the bishopric changed into moved to the town of Hvar.

It was critically damaged at some point of a raid of the Ottoman admiral Uluç Ali on the island of Hvar in 1571 before he participated along with his Algerian corsair fleet in the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571. Once the town had recovered from this devastation, the ruins of the vintage cathedral and of the adjacent episcopal palace have been demolished and the development of the new church begun in 1605. The bell tower was handiest completed in 1753.