2 stops in walking order

Viewpoint

A high karst plain 700 metres up, where in 1493 a Croatian noble army was decisively crushed by the Ottomans — one of the most consequential battles of Croatian history. Today it's a windswept plateau of scattered villages and huge skies. The modern memorial church at Udbina, with symbolic bells, is worth the climb.

~1 h at this stop

Church

Consecrated in 2010 on the site of the medieval Krbava battlefield, this striking modern church commemorates all Croatian martyrs of every century — from the knights slaughtered by Ottomans at Krbava in 1493 to those killed in the 1991–95 Homeland War. The architecture is deliberately hybrid: a low white-stone rotunda evoking the earliest Croatian pre-Romanesque churches, topped with a slim modern bell tower and surrounded by a semicircle of memorial walls listing thousands of names. Inside, minimal white walls frame a dramatic bronze crucifix by sculptor Kuzma Kovačić and stained glass by Josip Botteri Dini. Outside, a stone from every Croatian diocese has been embedded in a memorial path. The Krbava battlefield itself lies just below the church across an open plain — a decisive Ottoman victory in 1493 that killed almost the entire Croatian noble class in a single afternoon and pushed the front line north for the next two centuries. The scale of loss is why Croatia's medieval nobility virtually disappears from historical record after 1493. The church draws thousands on the annual pilgrimage on 9 September.

~45 min at this stop