Our Lady of the Rocks
Man-made islet off Perast with a domed baroque church and a museum of votive gifts and paintings.
Our Lady of the Rocks is an artificial islet in the Bay of Kotor, a short boat ride from the waterfront at Perast. Tradition dates its beginning to 1452, when seamen are said to have found an icon of the Madonna and Child on a rock in the sea and began keeping an oath to drop a stone there after each safe voyage. Over centuries the stones, together with old hulks sunk around them, built up the plateau of about 0.38 hectares on which the church stands.
The church was raised in the seventeenth century and given its present domed baroque form in a rebuilding completed in 1722. Inside are 68 canvases by the local baroque painter Tripo Kokolja, including a ceiling composition of the Death of the Virgin, and an altarpiece by Lovro Dobričević. The adjoining museum displays about 2,500 silver votive plaques left by sailors and an embroidered altar cloth worked over 25 years by Jacinta Kunić-Mijović, partly with her own hair.
Highlights
- Islet built up by seamen dropping stones after safe voyages since 1452
- Domed baroque church completed in its present form in 1722
- 68 canvases by the Perast baroque painter Tripo Kokolja
- Museum of some 2,500 silver votive plaques and an embroidered altar cloth
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