Croatia has a lot to offer: beautiful beaches, picturesque bays, emerald green national parks. However, the author Georg Lux and the photographer Helmuth Weichselbraun have been traveling the country since 2015 in search of forgotten places and buildings that bear witness to the darkest moments of turbulent Croatian history.
Lost Places – those who venture off the beaten track can find them everywhere in Croatia. “They often represent traces of human destiny cast in concrete, of realized and failed dreams,” writes Lux in the new book “Lost Places in Croatia”.
Railway lines without connections, partisan memorials and Nazi bunkers, industrial monuments and film locations, luxury hotels and prison islands: the book takes the reader on a varied journey of discovery to the relics of the past that tell great stories.
Creepy and picturesque at the same time: The Lost Places of Croatia
Lux and Weichselbraun not only provide picturesque pictures, but also helpful tips for all those who want to go on a search for clues themselves. How do you find the lost relics? how to get there What’s the best way to travel? What to pay attention to? The book provides the answers.
The journey leads among other things to real ghost villages. One of them is called Dvigrad in the Lim Valley. Around 1000 people once lived here. After cholera, malaria and plague epidemics, only three families were left in 1650. They fled and left their home village. Dvigrad became a ghost village. Today, work is being done to preserve the more than 220 houses, the city walls and the three defense towers.
At the so-called Dragon’s Eye there is another forgotten and abandoned place: the Church of the Savior is located in the sparsely populated area five kilometers east of the village of Kijevo at the foot of Mount Dinara. The sacred building was built in the 9th century and is now in the middle of a weather-beaten cemetery. The source at the foot of the mountain is called the dragon’s eye. The water hole is at least 115 meters deep – divers have never gotten further than that. “Eye of the Earth” or “Eye of God” are other names for this picturesque spring of the Cetina River.
You will find these and many other Lost Places in the book “Lost Places in Croatia” by Georg Lux and Helmuth Weichselbraun, published by Styria Verlag, price 28 euros.
Also take a look at the first book by Georg Lux and Helmuth Weichselbraun: “Lost Places in the Alps-Adriatic Region”.