United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From above the town the view looking towards Ossero is rather fine, the summits of the hills along the spine of the island rising one beyond the other, culminating in Monte Ossero, paling and getting bluer with greater distance. The sea, of a blue quite different in its quality, runs into the land in many little inlets, while beyond are Veglia and the mainland mountains often capped with clouds.
Twin basilicas occur elsewhere in Istria, though they were not always of the same date, as at Trieste, S. Michele in Monte, Pola, and probably at Ossero, where the seven-naved basilica of which Mr. T.G. Jackson gives the plan would be easily explained by the supposition. The original east end was square.
The pirates in the Adriatic were first the Narentans and next the Saracens, who devastated the coasts of Dalmatia in 840, fruitlessly besieging Ragusa for fifteen months, and afterwards taking Taranto and Bari. In 842 they defeated the Venetians at Taranto, and, on the octave of Easter, took Ossero and burnt it.
The cathedral was burnt in 1827, but the west door still remains, very closely resembling that of Ossero. A picture by Alvise Vivarini is preserved in the priest's house a Madonna with SS. Sebastian and Catherine, and SS. Christopher and Cosmas. In the chapel of the Mother of God is a Byzantine Madonna and Child on a gold ground.
Sebenico owes its chief celebrity perhaps to its cathedral, the chef d'œuvre of Giorgio Orsini, known as George of Sebenico, an architect of exceptional genius, whose work may also be seen at Spalato, Ragusa, probably at Ossero, and at Ancona on the other side of the Adriatic.
Just before we reached the bridge connecting the islands of Ossero and Cherso, which has to be crossed before the town of Ossero is reached, great banks of spurge made the roadside as yellow as fields full of charlock in England. In a wall at the entrance of the town the S. Mark's lion still watches, though the two fortresses which report says were here are no longer traceable.
They also wear elaborate earrings, a number of rings fastened together with a drop below, all of metal. From Lussin Piccolo we drove in the opposite direction to Ossero, the ancient Apsoros or Auxerrum, following a narrow road through olive-yards, along the shore or some way up the hill among a bewildering variety and luxuriance of vegetation.
They then passed on to Ancona and Adria, and as they returned captured a whole Venetian squadron. In 876 the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia raided the Istrian coast towns, but were defeated at Grado. He gave the tribute from the Roman cities of Dalmatia to the Croats and Narentans, so that Spalato, Zara, Traù, Arbe, and the Byzantine cities of Veglia and Ossero had to pay tribute to the Croats.
The chain of islands which forms a natural breakwater to the coast of Dalmatia is broken into two groups by the Punta Planka, the ancient Promontorium Syrtis, south of Sebenico. To the northern group belong Veglia, Cherso, Ossero, Arbe, Pago, and a number of smaller and less important islands, including Ugljan, opposite Zara, and Pasman, a little farther south.
The façade of the cathedral at Ossero has been ascribed to him, and there is nothing in its design to make his authorship impossible. In the next year he undertook work on the façade of the Cappella Grande of the parish church at Pago.
Word Of The Day