Church of Saint Luke
Small Romanesque-Byzantine church of 1195 in Kotor's old town, long shared by two congregations.
The Church of Saint Luke stands on a small square in the northern part of Kotor's walled old town. It was built in 1195, in the time of the Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja and his son Vukan, by a local citizen recorded as Mavro Kacafrangi, thought to have been a Greek from Apulia. The plan is a single nave with a dome on a drum, and the detailing mixes Byzantine and Romanesque forms; the building is set below the present street level and is one of the few in Kotor to have come through the region's earthquakes without serious damage.
From 1657 until 1812 the church held a Catholic and an Orthodox altar side by side, after Orthodox refugees from the Cretan War were allowed to use it in turn with the Catholic congregation; it later passed to the Orthodox Church. A fragment of the original twelfth-century painting survives on the south wall, showing Saint Sylvester with two martyrs. The main iconostasis carries icons of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, many from the Dimitrijević-Rafailović workshop of the Boka, while the eighteenth-century chapel of Saint Spyridon has an Italo-Cretan iconostasis.
Highlights
- Built in 1195 by the citizen Mavro Kacafrangi
- Catholic and Orthodox altars stood side by side from 1657 to 1812
- Surviving twelfth-century fresco of Saint Sylvester
- Icons by the Dimitrijević-Rafailović workshop of the Boka
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