Bernardin between the sun and the sea

On the 1^st July 1452, a year after the arrival of Saint John of Capestrano in this area, pope Nicholas V sent a special letter from Rome, in which he permitted the inhabitants of Piran to build the church and the monastery for the order of observant Franciscans. An inscription on the church’s façade tells us about it:

Hanc Sacram AEdem & Domum Religiosam
Cives Pyranenses pyssimi
Sancto Bernardino, &Fratribus Minoribus
Dedicarunt M.CCCC.LII

The church reigned above the sea and the bay of Piran, over the stretch of saltpans and fishing areas and olive tree groves.

The inside of the church matched its surroundings. Its construction was tapered, the bell tower was built in Venetian style.  The monastery was of medium size and it had dormitories, workrooms and cloister cells. Around the monastery were gardens with pine trees: it is said that they were planted by John of Capestrano himself. It was an ideal place for observant Franciscans, who devote themselves to the active contemplation of life and live by strict discipline, immersed in books.

After the fall of the Venetian republic in 1797, the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled over this area and dissolved the church and the monastery of St. Bernardin in 1806. Other monasteries in Istria saw the same end as the emperor Joseph II dissolved them too with a decree in 1783. In 1839 the Austrian army transformed the monastery in a fortress that protected the bay.  

Today we can still see the church’s bell tower with its 26,12 m of height. In 2002 the parish of Portorož in cooperation with the inter-municipal Institute for the protection of cultural and natural heritage of Piran, the management of Hoteli Bernardin (the owner of St. Bernardin’s church), the Municipality of Piran and the Ministry of culture, restored and rebuilt the chancel and the outside of the bell tower.

A well-preserved Roman tombstone made of sandstone was found during the construction of Hotel Histrion. The archaeologist of the Maritime museum “Sergej Mašera” of Piran, who was the first person to examine the finding, did not find the stone in its original location as it had been moved. According to the workers who found it, the stone was discovered 29 m southeast from the remains of the eastern wall of the chancel, at a depth of approximately 2 m in a layer of gravel.

The stone was beautifully carved, nowadays it is a little chipped; it measures 86 cm in height, 57 cm in width and 18 cm in thickness. The smooth stone has no profile on its edges and it bears a clear inscription on its upper part, written in five lines. The letters become gradually smaller in each line: in the first line their height is 7,5 cm, in the second 5,5 cm, in the third 4,5 cm and in the fifth 2,5 cm.

 C (aio) Liburnio / C (ais) f (ilio) Valenti /

Achaicus lib (erbus) / v (ivus) f (ecit) Sibi et suisque / omnibus.

Based on the text and the shape of the letters, archaeologists think it is a Roman tombstone from the end of the first or second century AD. The inscription tells us that the repentant Achaicus built this tombstone during his lifetime for Caio Liburnio, his sun Valenti, himself and all his relatives.

During construction work on almost the whole hill of Bernadin, from the shoreline in the southeast to the road from Piran towards Portorož, many other archaeological remains were found, such as fragments of Roman amphorae and bricks, all in the upper earth layers. Because of these findings, smaller archaeological probes were dug on the south-eastern and eastern side of the remains of St. Bernardin’s church. The oldest remains were the foundations of the cloister of the Franciscan monastery and the destroyed cemetery, probably dating to around 1452 as the church itself.