Cathedral of St. Vitus

Rijeka's cathedral is the only round baroque church in Croatia — a fact that gives it a strange, ceremonial gravity as soon as you push through its heavy oak doors. Begun in 1638 by the Jesuits and modelled loosely on Venice's Santa Maria della Salute, it took a full century to finish; the dome, added in 1725, still dominates the skyline of the old upper town. Inside, a huge black-marble main altar frames the cathedral's most venerated object: a 13th-century wooden Gothic crucifix that local legend says bled when a gambler hurled a stone at it in 1296, leaving a small hole on Christ's chest still visible today. Look up at the frescoed cupola, painted in tones of ochre and cream, and out to the side chapels for the delicate baroque sculpture of St. Sebastian. St. Vitus is Rijeka's patron and the city was long known as Terra Fluminis Sancti Viti — the Land of the River of St. Vitus — a name the Habsburgs shortened to Fiume. The cathedral sits a two-minute walk above the Korzo and is best combined with a stroll up to Trsat via the 561 steps of the Petar Kružić stairway. Free to enter outside services; concerts of sacred music are staged here through the Rijeka Summer festival in July. Photography without flash is welcome.