Ston Lapidarium (Lapidarij Ston)

The Lapidarij in Ston is a small museum of stone carving and church art on the ground floor of the Bishop's Palace, on Placa, the main street of the walled town. It is run by the parish of St Blaise in the Diocese of Dubrovnik, and the palace above it is still the home of Ston's parish priest. The museum describes its collection as one of the richer collections of medieval art in southern Croatia.

The building is part of the story. Ston was the seat of a bishop for many centuries, and after the diocese was restored in 1541 work began on a new residence for its bishops. The palace was finished in 1572, under Bishop Bonifacije de Stephanis, who held the see from 1564 to 1582. It faces the street with a formal Renaissance front and a deep loggia on the ground floor, and it was the only house in Ston built with its own garden. Later repairs left its original form intact.

The collection grew out of decades of work by local people. In the mid-20th century the parish priest don Ante Dračevac and the honorary conservator Frano Vlašić gathered and excavated carved stone scattered around Ston and its many small churches, intending to show it in the palace. That plan stalled, and the pieces stayed in storage until the Lapidarij was finally arranged and opened in 2015. On display are carved altar screen panels and other fragments with interlace ornament, frescoes, and remains from the early Christian churches of the Ston area, covering the period from Roman antiquity to more recent centuries. Paintings, liturgical objects, old charters and historic printed books complete the rooms. Among the treasures is a reliquary with fragments of the Holy Cross and the Crown of Thorns, brought to Ston by Bishop Bonifacije, and a collection of gold jewellery left by believers as votive gifts to saints and churches.

The Lapidarij is a good companion to a walk on the Ston walls. Many of the carvings come from churches you can still see in the surrounding fields and hills, such as the pre-Romanesque church of St Michael and Our Lady of Lužine, so the museum helps explain how long and how densely this small town has been settled and built on.