Saint Anthony on Calvary Hill

architect Zlatko Ugljen
project Church  of St. Anthony on Calvary Hill, Vitez Municipality, Bosnia and Herzegovina
written by Miljenko Jergović

 
When I saw a photograph of the interior of the church dedicated to St. Anthony and located on Calvary Hill near Vitez, I felt so moved that, with no easily explainable reason, I was on the verge of tears. It is the way we react to a song; an unexpected line of poetry or an unusual order of words or sentences in a story, usually written by Ivo Andrić, or to a piece of music, like Bach’s Toccata or the opening chords of the Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7; to that which cannot be easily written and has no practical function or use value. It is the way we react to poetry. 
Architecture, however, is opposite to poetry; it is where you hide from winter, rain, snow. It is the embodiment of our individual differences. We hide in a house as into ourselves. A house is no poetry, though. A house cannot move you. It usually does not.