Lumbarda

Lumbarda is a municipality with just over 1,000 inhabitants, six kilometres east from the city of Korcula. It extends around a small bay and on the hills behind it, and is surrounded by large sandy vineyards. Lumbarda is reached along a good asphalt road that passes through a picturesque area of pine woods and olive groves.

 

In the 3rd century B.C. a Greek (Hellenistic) agricultural settlement was founded here from which originated the Psephism and the gnathia vases found in graves (now in the Town Museum). There was a Roman villa rustica (rural estate) in the field north-east of today's village near Bilin zal beach. Since the 16 century prosperous Korcula landowners built summer houses called kastel on choice sites in Lumbarda, some of them still well preserved and inhabited: the Nobilo, Milina, Krsinic kastels. St Roch's parish church (Sv. Rok) with a nave and two aisles stands on Vela glavica hill in the middle of old Lumbarda, and there are several small old chapels in the village itself: St Bartul, St Peter, The Nativity of the Virgin (Mala Gospa). The church of the Holy Cross (Sv. Kriz) from 1774, in front of which is a characteristic porch, is surrounded by vineyards.

For centuries the people of Lumbarda were farmers, mostly grape growers, fishermen and stone-masons. Several prominent modern Croatian artists, sculptors and painters were born here: Ivo Lozica (1910-1943), Lujo Lozica (1934), Stipe Nobilo (1945), and the most important of all, Frano Krsinic (1897-1981). He made the bronze Second World War Memorial in the centre of the village and the bronze relief Fishermen on the hotel. Nearby is the studio-house and collection of the local amateur sculptor, the peasant Ivan Jurjev-Knez (1920), who works in stone and wood.

Today the local people are also engaged in tourism: there are hotels, several camps, many private pensions, restaurants, shops, and a small marina. The Ivo Lozica cultural and performing society in Lumbarda cultivates music, singing, folk dancing and amateur dramatics.