Dančulovina

The fortified residential complex of Dančulovina is situated in a cove southeast of Prevlaka. Dančulovina was named after a Dančuo who lived in Brda in the mid-16th century. The complex was restored by Bishop Marko Grgurina (1801-1815). After 1815, it belonged to the Beskuća’s and at the end of the 19th century passed to the Radoničić family from Dobrota. Dančulovina consists of a three-storey tower with a gable roof, a vaulted ground building topped by a flat terrace, a two-storey residential building with a characteristic belvedere, and a paved courtyard which connects all these buildings.

The complex was built in several phases. The first constructed building was a freestanding tower which was, in the next phase of construction, adjoined by an elongated, ground floor building. In the third phase, a residential building was added above the north side of the existing ground floor building. In the same period, an inner courtyard was formed within a square-shaped space enclosed by a wall.

The existence of the defensive tower in the vicinity of St. Michael’s monastery in Prevlaka could mean that these two buildings used to be connected in the past. Besides the characteristic location of the tower reminiscent of the location of “pirgs” (medieval towers) near medieval monasteries, this assumption is further confirmed by the Romanesque character of an entrance portal in the ground-floor building from the second phase of construction and by a recorded testimony about a fresco painting depicting the Serbian Emperor Dušan that existed in the tower until the end of the 19th century.

It was only in the later phases of construction and after the dissolution of the monastery in Prevlaka in the 16th or 17th century, that the fortified residential complex expanded its facilities for various purposes in the ground floor buildings, a paved yard with a well and a vaulted baking oven, a spacious terrace overlooking the sea and residential buildings.