The Jaw-Dropping Blaca Hermitage, Bol Croatia

Some posts include compensated hyperlinks. Please learn this disclaimer
for more information.

There’s a magnificence on Brač Island that extends previous Croatia’s most original seaside. For me, the true magnificence present in Bol is the not-to-be-missed website of the jaw-dropping Blaca hermitage, additionally known as the Blaca monastery or Pustinja Blaca in Croatian. 

Considered one of a number of hermitages on the island, the Blaca monastery is situated on the southern aspect of Brač Island. It started in a stone cave the place a few monks of the Croatian Glagolitic Order used it as a spot of solitude to dedicate themselves to God.

The monastery in Blaca was in 2007, fortunately added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative Record. For one, I can see why; what I can’t see is the way it hadn’t made an inventory sooner! It’s an actual inspiration; no phrases on a web page may give you an actual sense of this cultural attraction.

Means again within the early a part of the sixteenth century, two Glagolitic monks fled the Turks and located shelter in Bol and have been provided the cave as safety. After receiving the certificates of possession, the founding Monks established the monastery of Blaca and constructed a church surrounding the cave.

The monastery was in use for over 400 years. The monks and staff cultivated the cave space throughout that point, forming an intensely religious place and utilizing the hermitage as a farm, faculty, and for a few years a non-public astronomical observatory.

The Monks produced many hundreds of liters of wine, had lots of of olive timber, and pressed the oil. Sheep, oxen and mules, and greater than 230 distinctive stone-carved beehives carved have been onsite, making 3,000 kilos of scrumptious sticky honey every year. The farm’s harvest was used for buying and selling for the products required on the monastery.

After you stroll alongside the trail to succeed in the Blaca hermitage, you’ll must take a brief break and relaxation your legs as you catch your breath. In case you can, pay the small price to be taken on a tour of the once-thriving hermitage. Your information will probably be one among two brothers who preserve Blaca, now a museum. Simply one of the most original museums in Croatia, Blaca is a nationwide treasure.

Stepping up into the stone layers which kind doorways, paths, and an enormous open plan stone-kitchen, you’ll be in awe of simply how the technology of Monks who lived in Blaca, together with the employees, maintained their lives there. An previous mill carved from stone nonetheless stands. You are able to do as we did and be reminded of how milling flour as soon as took many labor-intensive hours.

Our information took us right into a small room, full with wood desks and an enormous wood abacus;

Right here is the college my father went to, he smiled. My father walked over three kilometers to this faculty carrying wooden as cost every day.

I shook my head in disbelief that young children wanted to stroll this far to high school and again once more carrying wooden simply 50 years in the past. I so desperately needed to take 1,000,000 images, however taking any images of Blaca is prohibited. 

Father Niko Miličević, a well known astronomer, grew to become the final monk to reside within the Blaca hermitage after his passing in 1963, however not earlier than he and the Monks earlier than him collected dozens of eye-opening artifacts. Together with 8,000 books, some 400 years previous & many written in Glagolitic script.

Alongside your tour of Blaca, you’ll see work, grand walnut furnishings, a printing press from 1894, which took one 12 months to provide a e book, and varied different objects, which have been all acquired utilizing cost within the type of wine olive oil, and honey.

Every merchandise was shipped to Blaca through boats from Italy and Vienna and was carried up the mountainside by staff. The 2 greatest items within the assortment are a telescope acquired after the monks traded a 12 months’s price of farm produce to a dealer in Venice. The second is a  400 kilo piano.

Weighing 400 kilograms, the piano was carried up the 2 and a half kilometer steep mountainside by the hermitage staff. Locals say that the lads drank 56 liters of wine alongside the best way to quench their thirst and provides them the increase they wanted to make it up the steep hill. 

If a piano and telescope usually are not sufficient to excite you, make sure to go to the armory room, the place a wealthy assortment of weapons are on show.

How To Get To The Blaca Hermitage

The hermitage is accessible in a number of methods. One choice is to take a automotive as much as Dragovoda; as soon as parked, you have to to take a brief hike there and again (20 to 40 minutes every approach) to succeed in the doorway to Blaca.

The second choice is to take the strolling path from the port (excursions are simply discovered); it’s a steep hike and may solely be tried by those that are match and with out young children. Both approach, make sure to put on enclosed footwear in your stroll and pack a number of water, as it will possibly get sweltering. 

Open Tuesday – Sunday 8am – 5pm

Lodging In Bol Croatia