ST. MARY'S CHURCH

Partly destroyed by fire in 1832, this former Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin (Crkva Svete Marije) has remained in its original state with its walls open to the air and its belfry St. Luke (Zvonik Svetog Luke) almost intact. This beautiful ruin has several interests. It is one of the few Gothic buildings in the country. It was built at the end of the 14th century by Franciscan monks on the site of a Romanesque church from the 12th century. As for the interior walls, they preserve a relatively well-preserved fresco of the Last Judgment dating from the early 15th century. From this period, the building was indeed reworked to serve as a royal church. It was here that the last kings of Bosnia were crowned. In 1459, Stefan (Stephen) Tomašević endowed the church with precious relics of St. Luke (including a finger recently returned to Jajce) and had the 23-meter-high belfry built. He was consecrated here on November 17, 1461, before being beheaded two years later in the nearby fortress, in May or June 1463, after surrendering to the Ottomans at Ključ, near Sanski Most. In 1582, the church was converted into a mosque and named after Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (Sultan-Sulejmanova Džamija). Also known as the Mosque of the Conquest (Fethija Džamija), the building was ravaged by fire once in 1658 and then restored. But it was abandoned after the fire of 1832. However, it escaped the destruction caused by the Bosnian-Serb forces in 1992-1993.