ja_mageia

The main reason to come here is to take a taxi boat (boat owners tout for custom along the harbour front) across the bay to the islet of Koš1jun, about 1 km offshore, where there is a Franciscan monastery (Franjevači samostan) founded by monks settled here by the Frankopans in 1447. From Košljun's jetty, a path leads up to the monastery church, with a lofty, wooden-beamed interior. Look out for the 1532 polyptych by Girolamo da Santacroce on the high altar, showing scenes from the life of the Virgin. In one panel, a stocky and bearded St Quirinus holds a maquette of Krk Town, accompanied by St Catherine, whose right hand rests on the wheel on which she was tortured. Stretching across the arch above the altar is a large and dignified Last Judgement, executed in 1654 by E. Ughetto, whose swirling panoramas of heaven, hell and purgatory provide a contrast with the simpler but no less harrowing Stations of the Cross by the twentieth-century Expressionist Ivo, Dukić. A side gallery holds pen-and-ink drawings by the naive painter Ivan Lackovic-Croata, and there are some rather more off-the-wall exhibits in the cloister outside, like a one-eyed sheep in a glass case and a two-headed lamb in a bottle. The adjoining museum has an interesting mishmash of stuff, including a selection of international banknotes and coins, some ancient typewriters and gramophones, and a display of local costumes. Outside, a confusing array of paths leads through the wilderness of the monastery gardens, although Košljun is so small that it's difficult to get really lost.