Ledenice Fortress Ruins and St Stephen's Church

On a rocky hill in the hinterland of Novi Vinodolski lie the ruins of Ledenice, a fortified medieval settlement that was abandoned in the early 19th century. Inside its walls are the remains of the parish church of St Stephen (sv. Stjepan), one of several ruined buildings on a site that the town of Novi Vinodolski lists among its protected cultural monuments.

The settlement is old. The hill was used as a prehistoric hillfort before the medieval town grew up on it, and Ledenice was one of the communities of the Vinodol valley whose representatives attended the signing of the Vinodol Statute on 6 January 1288; two Ledenice priests and a local captain are named in that document. The castle at the top of the settlement is first securely recorded in a charter of 1481. Later historians linked its building to the Frankopan counts and to the defence of Vinodol against Ottoman raids, though the exact date is uncertain. After the Ottomans were pushed out of Lika in 1689, Ledenice remained the seat of a captaincy under Senj, but it declined afterwards, and by 1835 the castle was described as a ruin. People moved down to the present village below the hill.

St Stephen's stood in the north-western part of the settlement, beside the town gate. It was a single-nave church in the Romanesque style, later remodelled in Gothic form. Only broken walls survive. Around it are the outlines of stone houses, stretches of the town wall and the ruined castle on the highest point, together with the remains of a church of St George built in 1716 and an old cemetery near the site. The ruins are unattended and free to explore; there are no facilities.

The reward for the climb is the setting. The walls look over the Vinodol valley and down to the Kvarner coast, with the islands beyond, and the stony hilltop is quiet in a way the beaches of Novi Vinodolski are not. There is no public transport into this hinterland, so a car is the practical way to reach the village of Ledenice below the hill, from where you continue on foot. Wear sturdy shoes, as the ground among the walls is rough and overgrown in places.