Trsat Castle Trsat Castle stands on the site of an old Roman fortress and was built in the first half of the 13th century by the
Frankopan Princes of Krk. From the beginning of the 15th century it had a succession of lords, but was most often owned by the
Habsburgs. In 1528 the Senj Capitan Gašpar Raab bought the castle and adapted and greatly strengthened it. Once the danger from the Turks had passed at the end of the 17th century, and fire arms had come into use, Trsat fortress was less important and was left allowed to fall into ruins, a process which was completed by an earthquake in 1750. Count
Laval Nugent, marshal and military commander of the Austrian coastal area, bought the ruins off the city, for an annual payment of one
florint and had it restored in a Romantic Classicist-Biedermeier-style. He engaged the Venetian builder Paronuzzio and repaired the towers, decorated the interior and even built himself a mausoleum in the style of a
Doric temple with four marble pillars supporting the
facade. After his death his impoverished descendants deserted the castle and it once again fell into ruin until 1960. Since then it has been restored and enriched by the presence of art exhibitions, summer concerts and theatrical performances.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat The Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat () is a church on the flat area at the top of Trsat hill and the subject of a legend dating from the 13th century. In May 1291 Mary's house in
Nazareth is said to have appeared here, moved by angels from Nazareth, then mysteriously disappeared later, to be discovered in Italy, in
Loreto, where it still stands today as a shrine. According to one version the Holy House was brought from the Holy Land by the Crusaders. Nikola Frankopan sent a delegation to Nazareth to measure the foundations as he had presumably only the stones in his possession and not the whole walls. He rebuilt the Holy House and the Frankopan Family then gave the Holy House to the Pope and, as the nearest Papal lands were near Ancona, the House was shipped there and placed in Loreto. Tradition ascribes the building of the church to Nikola I Frankopan (1307–1343) in 1291; it was extended and added to by his descendants. In 1453 Prince Martin Frankopan added on a nave to house a painting of
Mary, believed to have been donated by
Pope Urban V in 1367 and thought to have been painted by
Luke, and built a monastery alongside the church, occupied since 1468 by the Franciscans who are the guardians of the cult, which attracts many of the faithful. In 1644 a new nave was added to the church, which was extended and redone in
Baroque style by the contributions of the members of congregation and Princes Frankopans. In 1691 the monastery was rebuilt after a fire and the complete reconstruction of the interior of the cathedral began, which was completed by the mid of the 18th century. In 1726 a new sanctuary above the crypt was built, giving the entire space luxury of ceiling decoration. A new artistic contribution to the church was made by Vladimir Kirin (1894–1963), with five pictures on the greenish marble slabs with which the shrine is lined, and another by Ivo Režek (1898–1979) who portrayed the 14 stations of the cross in fresco technique. One of the guardians of the Trsat monastery was the outstanding
Glagolitic expert and writer of books in Croatian, Latin and Italian, Franjo Glavinič (1585–1652).
The Trsat stairway The Trsat stairway begins on the banks of the
Rječina, beside a bank building, and leads up to the plateau at 138 m above sea level. There are 561 steps in all, and they were built for pilgrims on their way to the votive church. Work was started on them in 1531 by
Petar Kružić, hero of battles against the Turks, who built the lower part of the stairway, later expanded to 538 steps. The Baroque entrance hall in the form of a triumphal arch was built in the first half of the 18th century, and the votive chapels on the level ground near the church by the steps, between the 15th and 18th centuries, one chapel each century. from Rijeka to Trsat == Education ==