Church of St. Mary & Gold of Zadar

Beside the Forum stands the 11th-century Church of St. Mary, part of a still-active Benedictine convent founded in 1066 by a Zadar noblewoman named Čika, whose beautifully preserved illuminated prayer book (the 'Vekenega Evangelistary') is one of Croatia's most treasured manuscripts. The church itself is a modest but elegant Romanesque building, but the real reason to come is next door: the extraordinary treasury known as the 'Gold and Silver of Zadar' (Zlato i Srebro Zadra), one of the finest ecclesiastical treasure collections in Europe. Displayed in a beautifully modernised suite of former convent rooms, the collection includes 8th-century Byzantine reliquaries, gothic silver processional crosses, jewelled reliquary busts of saints made by 14th-century Venetian goldsmiths, and — most spectacularly — the 12th-century silver-gilt reliquary chest of St. Simeon, weighing 240 kg and among the largest medieval reliquaries anywhere. The nuns still live in the convent and take turns explaining the pieces to visitors, giving the whole experience an unexpectedly intimate quality. Photography is strictly forbidden. Come in the morning when a low sun filters through the display cases and the reliquary gold seems to glow from within.