Croatian Sacral Monuments - Kraljeva Sutjeska Monastery

The Franciscan monastery at Kraljeva Sutjeska, at the foot of Mt Teševo, in the Central Bosnian commune of Kakanj, is the spiritual and cultural center of the population there. According to the records of the Franciscan friar Bartol of Pisa from 1385, the oldest monastery dates from the first half of the 14th century. The monastery was mentioned in a Turkish census of 1469. In the difficult times in the 16th century the Turks destroyed and burnt the monastery. It took a long time for the monastery to be reconstructed. The Turkish authorities did not permit the use of strong building materials such as stone and brick, and the monastery was destroyed in a fire in 1658. It was rebuilt a few years later. During the 19th century it was renovated and redecorated several times, and it achieved its present appearance in 1888 – 1890.

The monastery church is dedicated to St John the Baptist, and has been demolished several times, either by the Turks or by fire. The architect Josip Vancaš designed its present neo-Renaissance look. Marko Antonini painted the interior in 1908. The monastery houses a rich collection of cultural, artistic and historic treasures: paintings, books and documents. The oldest painting is the Adoration of the Magi from the 15th century by an unknown author. The monastery treasury houses two paintings by the local master Stjepan Dragojlović from the 16th and 17th centuries. The collection contains valuable chalices, the oldest being a Gothic one, from 1416. The monastery archives contain a rich collection of church and secular documents, the oldest being the parish registers from 1641. The deed of the King Matthias Corvinus from 1481 is worth mentioning. The monastery library contains 31 precious incunabula (books printed before 1500) and books by old Bosnian authors. Not far from Kraljevo Sutjeska is Bobovac, the seat of the medieval Bosnian rulers.