2022Christmas - Stamp Booklet

As a mirage, the Đakovo Cathedral emerges from the Slavonian plain, made as a symbol of all that “for faith and country” sought to be accomplished and achieved by bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer. He was building it from 1866 to 1882, on the site of a small medieval Baroque church, led by faith in the future, a gesture of pride and self-awareness. He entrusted the construction to the Viennese architect Karl Rösner, and after his death to Friedrich von Schmidt, whose associate, with great authority, was Hermann Bollé. The cathedral was built in a Neo-Romanesque style, which emphasizes monumentality of the building by its stereometric construction and clarity. Having built his cathedral, Strossmayer in a certain way moved the border of the West; he enriched the historical network of western cathedrals with a masterpiece of historicism.