h wall is an
ogee-headed window, deeply splayed and with pretty tracery; below it a
little shrine to the Virgin is set most oddly, with an arch projecting
up into the window space. A little higher up the street is the fine
Venetian door illustrated a few pages back, with columns and pinnacles,
and returning wall with elaborately shaped battlements. At the church of
S. Giovanni Battista is a fine external stair of fourteenth-century
Venetian type, a double flight returning on itself, with a landing at
the change of direction. The balustrade is continued round the side of
the church and the tower, but with square unmoulded shafts in place of
the colonnettes. The trefoiled heads are cut in the rail with the carved
spandrils between. There are many pieces of sculpture of the Venetian
period, windows, balconies, &c., in the walls here and there, and
wheel-windows occur with quatrefoils filling the heads of the spaces
next the circumference.

[Illustration: BELFRY OF GREEK CHURCH, SEBENICO

_To face page 257_]

There are also a few pictures to be seen. In the cathedral is an
Andrea Schiavone (who died here in 1582), "The Adoration of the Three
Kings." In S. Domenico alla Marina there are said to be fine Renaissance
altars, and pictures by Lorenzo Lotto, Palma Giovane, and Marco
Vecellio. We did not see them, as, on the occasion of both our visits to
Sebenico, the church was being restored or rebuilt. The interior of S.
Francesco is harmonious. It was in the archives of this convent that
Mgr. Bulic discovered a gradual written on parchment of the ninth or
tenth century, which had been brought from S. Maria di Bribir in 1527.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF SEBENICO]

The Greek church has a very interesting belfry of late Renaissance style
in the gable; two arches with projecting semicircular pierced
balustrades for the ringers, and the bells (which are clappered) hanging
in the free space beneath the arch above. A third bell is in a higher
arch without the balustrading. The Greek Christians celebrate the Church
festivals with processions about the town, treated with great respect by
their Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, of which one held on the
Assumption may be described as typical. Boys and girls with garlands led
the way, followed by women with coloured aprons and voluminous
draperies. Then came a band in gay uniforms and plumed head-gear, then
priests in vestments of cloth of gold, swinging silver censers, or
bearing holy