Fede e realtà o quanto è bella
Petar Hektorović 1487. – 1572.
He engraved his own life motto in Italian. Oh how beautiful is faith and reality!
Tvrdalj the castle with a fish pond and a dovecote above it, is the most famous building of
Stari Grad. This Renaissance poet built it throughout his long life and was as significant to him as a literary work. In it, he realized the idea of a microcosm – a small, closed world in which all God’s beings have space to live – fish, birds, plants and people (he, his friends, holy women, travelers and the poor!). The fortress is also a stone book – Hektorović has carved more than twenty stone inscriptions in Latin.
The poet, Christian thinker and builder Petar Hektorović built Tvrdalj (from fortresses, fort = fortress) persistently almost obsessively throughout his long life. He started it as a summer house (Petar Hektorović, Marin’s son, built it for himself and his friends at his own expense and care, there is a Latin inscription at the entrance to the pond) and left it to his descendants as a closed and rounded microcosm dedicated to the Creator of everything (the largest Latin inscription ).
Hektorovic dedicated his entire mature life to his claimant by incorporating his spirit into it and thus inherited it along with his verses to our time. that is why he wrote “On my fortress that adopts me” which is on the pedestal of the bust of Petar Hektorović himself on the main square Tvrdalj.
