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Kotor St Luke’s Church 
Located in Greca Square within the northeastern urban quarter of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the old fortified city of Kotor. St. Luke's Church was built as a Catholic Church by Mauro Kacafrangi in 1195 during the reign of Stefan Nemanja (1166–1196), the Grand Prince and the founder of the Serbian medieval state. The church is an excellent example of early Christian church design incorporating Romanesque, Byzantine, and Slavic elements in its architecture. The Church was one of several churches that were built in Kotor Old Town between 1185 AD and 1371 AD. The design of these churches merged early Christian church design with traditional Slavic architecture. From 1657 to 1812, it housed both Catholic and Orthodox altars, with both the two faiths holding services. In 1812 the church was given to the Orthodox church, a testimonial to the harmonious co-existence of the Orthodox and Catholic people. Over the years Kotor has had numerous earthquakes and this is the only building in the town that did not suffer any major damage. Its exterior shows a major dome in the centre with several semi-circular aspects of the church. The rear of St Luke’s Church, like all Romanesque churches, is semi-circular and faces east. This became the apse, which is under a semi-dome. The distinctively Romanesque paired arched windows separated by a mullion can be seen at the rear of the Church.  The western façade of St Luke’s, as shown above, provides entrance to the church with the door being recessed under a larger arch. The interior contains a single nave with the circular dome located above a square space with each side of this space having an arch to allow traffic across the floor. Each of the arches is at right angles to each other and is supported by pillars. Each of the spaces between the adjacent arches has spherical triangles, or pendentives, which provide contact for the entire base of the dome.  The floor of the church is made from tomb panels. Up until the 1930s, the burying of Kotor citizens could take place in the church itself. Following its construction, the church was decorated with frescoes, although only some fragments of these remain on the southern wall.  At the end of the nave are the altars.  The church also has a latticed wooden ceiling and a silver iconostasis made by the Czech painter Frantisek Ziegler in 1908.  |
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All Photographs were taken by and are copyright of Ron Gatepain
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