The last surviving gate of medieval Gradec, and a working shrine inside a road tunnel.
Medieval Gradec had five gates. Four are gone. The Kamenita vrata — the Stone Gate — is the one that is left, and it is not really a gate any more. It is a short stone tunnel with a road running through it and a chapel built into one side.
The fire
In 1731 a fire destroyed most of the wooden buildings around the gate.
A painting of the Virgin and Child hanging in the gateway survived, undamaged, in a burnt-out frame. The people of Gradec took this as a miracle, and the gate has been a shrine ever since.
The painting is now behind a wrought-iron grille inside the tunnel, in a small chapel with pews, candle stands and a permanent congregation.
What you see
The votive plaques. The walls around the chapel are covered in small stone and marble tablets, most carrying a single word — HVALA, thank you — and a date.
They run from the eighteenth century to last month. People still put them up. Reading down a wall of them is the most affecting thing in the Upper Town, and it costs nothing.
There is a baroque statue of the Virgin by the entrance and a wrought-iron gate by the Zagreb ironworker Antun Jurjević.
The Madonna of the Stone Gate was declared the patron of the city of Zagreb in 1991.
The other statue
At the top of the street, on the Gradec side, stands a bronze of St George killing the dragon — a piece of Viennese sculpture of 1853, moved here in 1908. The dragon is already dead and George is looking at it with what reads, from the right angle, as regret.
Practical
Free, permanently open, and lit at night.
It is on the natural walking route: up Radićeva from the lower town, through the gate, and out into St Mark’s Square. Or come the other way, down through the gate and into Tkalčićeva.
Fifteen minutes is enough unless the plaques catch you, in which case it will be longer.
Radićeva, the street below, is worth the climb on its own — steep, narrow, and full of small shops selling licitar hearts, the red iced honey-dough decorations that are on the UNESCO intangible heritage list.
