Ukryte skarby Chorwacji

Plates, cups, vases, bowls? Ceramic pottery designed in the 16th century in the Turkish city of Iznik are very rare. In the ship wreckage of "St. Pavao" at Mljet, more than 100 of these pieces were found.In the summer of 2006, holidaying scuba-divers came across a vase among vestiges of an old shipwreck close to Mljet island in Dalmatia, Croatia. The group's leader, archaeologist Jurica Bezak, had an inkling the wreck could be important and told his employer the Croatian Conservation Institute (CCI) about the discovery. The following summer CCI experts examined the site, and began recovering some of the items they found there. They named it the "Sveti Pavao Shipwreck", because it lay close to a dangerous underwater shoal of that name. The serrated rocks, set almost exactly at sea-level, were probably what had brought about the ship's demise. The wreck lies in the 40-50m range, so the divers' work was laborious and difficult. At first it seemed that the wreck was unremarkable, however, it turned out that the vessel was most likely a Venetian merchant ship that had come to grief between 1580 and 1590, and that a substantial part of its cargo consisted of extraordinarily valuable fritware pottery from the Ottoman city of Iznik. More than 100 examples of these ceramics have been found now and it's a unique discovery - no other such ship has ever been found before. ? Arne Hodalic / eyevine