Explore Northern Dalmatia Šibenik’s dominating feature is the
tumescent, daffodil-bulb-from-outer-space dome of St James’s
Cathedral (Katedrala svetog Jakova), a Gothic Renaissance
masterpiece that still has art historians clutching their heads
in a “how-on-earth-did-they-build-that?” state of admiration.
Occupying the site of an earlier church, the current edifice was
begun in 1431 when a group of Italian architects oversaw the
erection of the Gothic lower storey of the present building. In
1441, dissatisfaction with the old-fashioned Gothic design led
to the appointment of a new architect, Juraj Dalmatinac, who
presided over three decades of intermittent progress,
interrupted by cash shortages, two plagues and one catastrophic
fire. The cathedral was just below roof height when he died in
1473 and his Italian apprentice Nikola Firentinac (“Nicholas of
Florence”), thought to have been a pupil of Donatello, took
over. Firentinac fashioned the cathedral’s barrel roof and
octagonal cupola from a series of huge