Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, called the Duomo or the Congregational Church in Rijeka. It is located at the end of Užarska Street, once the main road.
The church was originally built in the early Middle Ages on the ruins of a Roman baths. In 1442, Master Juraj from Zadar restored the existing three-nave basilica and raised its main nave. The church was repaired even after the Venetian destruction of Rijeka in 1509.

It was rebuilt from the ground up in 1695, and between 1716 and 1726 the Orlando family, Carniolan nobles and patricians from Rijeka, added a spacious sanctuary in the middle of which is their tomb.

The main altar is the work of Mislej's Ljubljana workshop, and the four statues of Saints Simon, Anna, Margaret and Anthony are the work of the eminent Paduan sculptor Jacop Contier. The ceiling of the sanctuary is decorated with high quality baroque stucco. In the eight side chapels are multicolored marble altars, made by Baroque sculptors Pasquale Lazzarini, Antonio Michelazzi and Sebastiano Petruzzi in the 18th century. The fallen altarpieces are by the painter Ivan Franjo Gladić (Handing over the keys, 1640), Valentin Metzinger (St. Philip Nereus, 1753, St. Anthony, 1750), and the Rijeka painter Ivan Simonetti copied Titian's works "The Assumption" in the 19th century. "for the main altar and" St. John the Baptist "for the altar of the same name.

The walls inside the church were painted by the famous Italian decorative painter Augusto Pagliarini in 1932, and he used stucco in the sanctuary as a motif. At the initiative and at the suggestion of Andrija Ljudevit Adamić, the city architect Joseph Storm made a project for today's facade in 1824, in which he incorporated a Gothic-Renaissance window rose dating from 1516. The sculptures on the gable were erected in 1890.

Under the current floor, built in 1901, there are 75 tombs of medium depth up to 2.5 m. Stone slabs from these tombs are built into the outer north wall of the church, and their inscriptions are historical testimonies of the Rijeka population.

Next to the church is the bell tower, an independent building in the base of which is built of stones from Roman ruins. It is dated above the arch of the entrance door in 1377. The bell tower with Gothic openings was given to the bell tower during the restoration of the church at the end of the 15th century. The bell tower, according to measurements from 1920, is inclined by 40 cm, so it was nicknamed the Leaning Tower.
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