Lapidarium Museum

A small purpose-built museum on the edge of the old town, housing a collection of medieval and Renaissance stone carvings recovered from the cathedral and other buildings around Novigrad. The collection itself is specialised — capitals, choir screens, fragments of altars — but the building it is presented in is exceptional.

The architects (Randić-Turato) built a dark, almost cave-like concrete pavilion right at the water's edge, with the stones presented like sculpture against polished walls and large windows opening onto the sea. The whole building can be visited in 45 minutes; combined with a walk along the adjacent town walls it makes a short, distinctive morning.

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The Lapidarium building won the Croatian Architecture Prize when it opened in 2006. The design is deliberately minimal — concrete, glass, dark steel — and the stone fragments are displayed almost ceremonially, the way you would display modern sculpture. It is one of the most unexpected pieces of contemporary museum architecture in the country.

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