All that glitters is, in fact, gold, at the Icon Gallery at All Saints’ Church, tucked just inside the Venetian fortifications of Korčula’s Old Town. It was here that Korčulan sailors hid the treasure they had taken from the Siege of Candia on Crete in 1669.
An agreement with the Ottomans, who had blockaded the port for 20 years, allowed the Croatians to make off with whichever glimmering Byzantine icons they could carry. They now fill Korčula’s Icon Gallery, beatific saints and gleaming biblical scenes, which came out of the same Croatian Renaissance that produced the artist El Greco.
