Valamar Blog

The town of Krk can boast by such a building as it is a very rare phenomenon. This unusual floored little church is devoted to St. Quirinus, the protector of the town of Krk, and it dates from the 12th century, while on the ground floor there is St. Margareta church.
Church is built from the local white stone, and it is placed opposite the cathedral, so its orientation is North-to-South, instead of traditional orientation East-to-West.

The lower church, as it is the case with almost all Romanesque churches, represents a simple solution: rough, but suggestive and solemn, in which the penumbra envokes a mystical feeling and invites to gathering and prayer. It used to be a three-aisle (now two-aisle) church, where one aisle had been transformed into an alley (passage). The space of that church is also characterized by an interesting division using the arches of the cross-dome rising from the ground.

As an interesting fact, we can single out that, during the time of Frankopan dukes of Krk, on the ground floor, the convicts from a nearby court attended the mass.

In time, the church of St. Margareta had also been used as a decimary – a place where denary was paid to the church. But after that sort of tax was abolished, the interior became a storage space used by the cathedral.. Finally, in 1961, the church was renovated, and in 1964, the old altar was once again placed on the original location. There is a museum of sacral art, which is also very interesting to visit.