St. Jerome’s Church and the area of the current Dominican monastery belong to a great monastery complex founded for the Augustinians in 1315 by the Devin Counts, who were the feudal rulers of Rijeka, and completed by their successors, the barons Walsee, in the first half of the 15th century.
The votive chapels of the Holy Trinity and the Immaculate Conception are the largest and most important gothic monuments in Rijeka. The Holy Trinity Chapel, currently a sacristy situated along the eastern cloister, was constructed in 1450 by Rijeka’s captain Martin Raunacher and his wife Margarit, whose coats of arms can be found on the chapel entrance console, while the remains of the mural on the gothic rib vault, attest to the influence of the gothic cultural circle. At the beginning of the 16th century, Rijeka’s captain Gaspar Rauber and his wife Katarina constructed the Immaculate Conception Chapel, situated along the northern cloister. The groin vault, with shallow-relief heraldic motifs on the capstones, as well as the remains of the mural on the ceiling and the façade, are preserved from this Late Gothic phase. In 1676, the Rijeka Patrician Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception extended the chapel into a three-nave area. The marble altar from the beginning of the 18th century is the work of the master-sculptor, Lazzarini, while the altarpiece is the work of the Rijeka painter, Ivan Simonetti from 1850.
In the mid 16th century, the prior of the monastery Ivan Klobučarić, known as Fluminensis, was a painter-cartographer at the Graz and Vienna courts. Currently, his aquarelle paintings of Rijeka’s sights, which are of exquisite quality and historical value, are preserved in Vienna’s War Archives. In 1543, when Ivan Primožić was the prior, the visage of the monastery was finally defined, which is attested by an epigraphic monument.
After the great earthquake of 1750, a single-nave gothic church was erected and extended towards the west, while its interior and main façade were redecorated in the Baroque style. The monumental main altar represents the work of the sculptor Antonio Michelazzi, from 1744, and the altarpiece “Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Augustine” is a high quality work by an unknown artist from the late 17th century. The altarpiece is of monumental dimensions, providing an important depiction of the city of Rijeka in the background between the two saints, while St. Jerome holds a model of the then monastery in his hand.
In the church are the Baroque marble altars of St. Monica and Our Lady of the Rosary, who founded the brotherhoods bearing their names, whilst the altarpieces are attributed to the Venetian painter Francesco Fontebasso. On the side walls of the church are the altars of St. Nicholas of Tole and of Our Lady of Good Counsel, with a small painting of the Madonna from an older altar.
Among the numerous paintings in the Dominican monastery’s collection is Deputation of Shepherds, a valuable work of art by the domestic painter, John the Baptist Cosimini, from 1687.
In the monastery cloister, there are 23 sepulchral slabs of Rijeka’s patricians embedded peripherally. The following ones stand out due to their quality: Captain Nikola Rauber`s sepulchral slab from 1482, with the figure of a knight in armour wielding a hammer; those of Martin Raunacher and his wife Margarita in red marble with a relief of their coat of arms. In the church sanctuary are sepulchral slabs of the Devin and Walsee feudal rulers, Augustinian monks, and Joseph Minolli, who donated the main altar.
In the Rijeka Resolution Square (Trg Riječke Rezolucije), which had served as a playground for the patricians’ children since 1700, Emperor Maximilian raised a stone flagpole known as the Stendarac, to mark the loyalty of the city during the Venetian occupation in 1508, with the engraved recognition of citizen’s political rights in Latin. During Napoleon’s conquests, the Habsburg double-headed eagle was toppled from the pole top, but the shallow relief of St. Vitus, the patron saint of Rijeka, holding a model of the city and a palm branch as a symbol of martyrdom, has been preserved.
In 1788, the Augustinian order was abolished by imperial decree and the complex was placed under the management of the priesthood of peace. In 1833, the City council repurchased the monastery area and redesigned it for the purpose of administration, but it was only with the renovation plan in 1874 that the Municipal acquired its current appearance. After World War II, the eastern complex was converted into a Dominican monastery and no longer housed the City Council.