Legend has it that Richard the Lionheart was saved and cast ashore on Lokrum after a shipwreck on his way back home from The Third Crusade and consequently vowed to build a church to thank god for saving his life.
Dubrovnik leaders, they convinced him it would be much better to build the church in Dubrovnik instead. The leaders of Dubrovnik convinced him to build a church on the mainland instead on island Lokrum as it was originally conceived. However, the church that we see now is not the the Romanesque church from the 12th century that collapsed during the Great Earthquake in 1667. But this story about archeological research gets even more interesting when team of archeologists finds yet another 7th-century cathedral under the foundations of the old Romanesque one.
Today’s Cathedral of Annunciation of St. Mary was constructed by 1713 in the Roman-Baroque style and it is a house of famous treasury of Cathedral that contains 182 relics including the one relics of Dubrovnik patron, St. Blasius.
