Beskuća Palace

Beskuća Palace stands opposite Bizanti Palace, in the street leading from Weapons to Flour Square. It was built in 1776 on the site of some earlier buildings. It is believed that one of these buildings was a house of the famous Bizanti family and that the present-day portal of Beskuća Palace was taken from it. Beskuća Palace has a simple architectural form, with some decorative elements. The most impressive is a Gothic portal probably taken from a house of the Bizanti family. The portal is a real masterpiece of the ornate Gothic style, one of the most beautiful pieces on the eastern Adriatic coast. The portal displays the coat-of-arms of the Bizanti family rendered in bas-relief , with a lion standing on a horizontal beam in its upper part and three slanting beams in its lower part.

The palace was owned by the Beskuća family from Prčanj. The family became distinguished at the end of the 18th century, acquiring great wealth in a relatively short period through maritime trade. The family also acquired the status of Kotor nobility and possessed numerous estates and houses in Boka Kotorska, especially in Prčanj, Kamenari and Tivat. In Prčanj they had a beautiful Baroque palace. The family also owned property in Venice and Constantinople and an estate called Quaderni in Verona.

The family coat-of-arms depicts a snake coiled around a tree, holding a child in its mouth, with an inscription: “Si dues com nobis, quis contra nos” (If God is with us, who shall be against us? ). The family legend says that the Beskuća’s settled in Prčanj from Stoliv as vagabonds. Because of that they were named Beskuća, meaning literally “without house”. However, they soon acquired a great fortune and one of their members, Count Jozo Beskuća, owned 99 houses in Boka Kotorska and Italy. He wanted to become the owner of no less than 100 houses and change the family surname into “Stokuća”, meaning “one hundred houses”. However, his ambition remained unfulfilled.

After the Beskuća family died out at the beginning of the 19th century, the palace belonged to the Municipality of Kotor. The then governing Austrian authorities turned the palace into a district court in whose archives the Notary Books of Kotor from the 14th to the 18th century were kept. Today, they are one of the most valuable collections in the Historical Archives of Kotor.

Source: Martinović Jovan, Sto kotorskih dragulja, Rijeka Crnojevića, 1995.