Folk tradition on the island of Šolta mentions a legendary castle the Illyrian queen Teuta. Her name in the original form in the Illyrian language would be Teutana - which would mean "mistress of the people" or "queen", and I also found that the proto-Indo-European root could go in the direction of "ruler of the people under arms", which again associates to the queen.
Teuta lived in the 3rd century BC, and ruled after the death of her husband Agron as regent for her stepson Pines from 231 to 228 or 227 BC. In addition to Šolta, folklore mentions its castles or forts near Sućuraj on Hvar and on the island of Svetac (St. Andrija). In 1983, it was published in the religious publication of the Parish of St. Stjepan that a sword and an iron crown were found at the Gradac location, but I do not know where they were stored or their attribution.
Into research location Gradac, on which, according to local tradition, the remains of Teuta's palace are located, I went there for the first time in August 2021, during my summer vacation on Šolta, and then, much better equipped, again at the end of September of the same year. On the Internet, I found only a few pieces of information that there was also a prehistoric fort at that location, but not a single photo. None of my acquaintances and previous interlocutors from Solta had personally been to that location, so I could not be guided by any previous experience.
August 2021.
In preparation for the tour of the Gradac location, I looked at several different maps from the 19th and 20th centuries, but none of them showed a fort or any other object at that location. Only the toponym Gradac was associated with possible construction. Looking at Google-Maps, I noticed outlines that resembled the possible walls of a fort, approximately square in shape with round "towers" on top. In the absence of better information, I assumed that the location that is the subject of my interest is located there.
In the first attempt to go to the target location, I started with my relative Nataša Blagaić. We got as close as we could by car, driving along an ungraded road towards Senjska bay, following the sign from the main road Grohote - Gornje Selo. The last half kilometer of the road towards Senjska is in bad condition and full of deep potholes. I do not recommend driving that road in ordinary vehicles, but a skilled driver of a better SUV can pass without major problems. All the way to the bay, we were unable to find a road or at least a path up the right hill. Several times we tried to cross the piles (drywall), but each time we had to give up because of the dense and thorny vegetation. We went all the way down to the pit in Senjska bay without finding any possibility of approaching the target location, especially not in summer clothes and ordinary tennis shoes. In that first attempt, we did not notice anything that would particularly attract our attention.
The next day, accompanied by my daughter Dora, I came by car to a large olive grove northwest of the Senjska bay and descended the pile to about 200 meters aerial distance from the target location (in Figure 2, the olive grove and the pile can be seen in the upper left part). Even from that position, I didn't see anything that looked like a fort. Access from this side did not seem possible without clearing a path through thick vegetation with machetes or even chainsaws. Steep rocks on the other side of the bay led to the conclusion that the remains of some kind of construction could be found on them. Even though we did not reach the set goal even in this attempt, at least we got a better picture of the situation on the ground.
On the afternoon of the same day, Nikola Cecić Karuzić, the mayor of the municipality of Šolta, with whom I spoke about the failed tour of the Gradac location, referred me to Joško Petrić's barba. The next morning, Dora and I headed towards Senjska and at nine o'clock, as agreed, we met barba Joško and received instructions from him on how to climb Gradac.
We started from the last house in the bay, passed through the yard and headed up a slope that cannot be called a path. I do not recommend this approach to those who have no experience in hiking. We climbed slowly, looking for less overgrown passages, and at about fifty meters above the sea we saw for the first time the wall mentioned by barba Joško. It was not the location that we determined as our goal in Figure 1, but a completely different one, about 250 meters to the south, or in our case much closer. Above the wall is a mast with three round metal plates, which I later learned from Dink Sula that it is one of the landmarks for measuring the speed of ships. That structure was placed, as we later found out, inside the walls of the old building, i.e. the remains of the fort.
A direct ascent towards that wall is not possible due to the natural steep rock, but we bypassed it somewhat further north, that is, to the right in the direction of ascent. In doing so, we came across some other parts of the wall and drywall, which I assumed were part of a possible approach or some old road to the fort. The wall is made of stone connected with ancient plaster, and on the left part (seen from the inside) it rests on a large rock in which some depressions were obviously made by human hands. The wall itself was placed almost in a straight line on the steep rock and obviously had a protective role, possibly also in a military sense. We walked another fifty meters in the south and southwest direction, but we could not go any further because of the vegetation and rocks. Apart from the mentioned wall, we did not find any other traces of construction.
Dora found one round stone, probably sandstone, about 4 centimeters in size, which we assumed could be some kind of prehistoric artefact (Figure 5). The stone was forwarded to the archeologists of the Split museum and at the time of writing this text we still do not have an official confirmation, but unofficially it is a Neolithic object made by human hands.
Returning to the wall, we noticed on the left side towards the top, about fifty meters away, another wall and headed towards it. It was a partially demolished drywall. We passed over it and continued towards the top. There we came across the remains of a rectangular building, possibly a house or tower, built of stone and plaster, also on the rock and another wall built in the continuation of the steep rock in the direction of the east (Figure 5). We went around the top of the Gradac location as far as we could make our way through the vegetation and did not spot anything else. Tired of the climb and the heat, we decided not to go further towards the target location (Figure 2) due to the dense vegetation and the lack of tools to clear the passage.
On the way back to the vehicle, we headed through sparse vegetation slightly north of the road we used to climb, because that part seemed less steep and safer to descend. We came to the end of the road above the bay, very close to the place where we left the car. We contacted barba Joško, asking him not to send the Mountain Rescue Service after us, and headed home determined to come much better equipped for the next trip to Senjska.
September 2021.
I went on my next trip to Gradac on Wednesday, September 29, 2021, in the company of my relatives from Soltan, Nataša and Zoran Blagaić from Maslinica. This time we left nothing to chance. We dressed well, and also brought the appropriate equipment with us: machetes, a folding saw, a laser rangefinder, a metal detector, enlarged prints of terrain maps and cell phones with applications for reading GPS coordinates and heights.
As the starting point of the ascent, we chose the exit point of the previous hike, which turned out to be a good choice. As we climbed, we used machetes to clear the vegetation. In about ten minutes, we reached the first of three locations where we took measurements of the existing walls. Our original plan was to measure two locations (1 and 3) because at that time we did not know about the existence of location 2.
While Nataša and I measured the lengths and heights of the walls and recesses in the rock, Zoran went through the entire site with a metal detector. Unfortunately, he did not find any metal objects, but he did find some pottery, probably a clay pot and part of the bottom of a bowl or plate. Nataša added a small stone with a hole in the middle, and I added another piece of clay pottery. In addition, we also took a piece of broken plaster from under one of the walls and prepared it all together for delivery to the archaeologists in the museum in the hope that we will contribute at least a little to some future research and a more precise time determination of the creation of the walls.
The first location (see Figure 9) on the map marked with number 1 is located at GPS coordinates 43.35907, 16.3101 at a height of 47 m above sea level (data downloaded from the mobile application). Behind the wall, which is the subject of our measurement, there is a metal post, that is, a mast with three round tin signs, which I mentioned earlier. The wall stretches in a straight line in the northwest-southeast direction and is 13,10 meters long. The wall is 85 centimeters wide at the northwestern end, and 102 centimeters wide at the southeastern end. Seen from the north-western side, the first 2,8 meters of the wall are of a uniform height of about 90 centimeters, and then it is semicircularly collapsed in a length of 4,4 meters, after which it has a height on the inner side of 1,47 meters, which slightly falls in the length of the next 2,57 meters to a height of 1,32 meters. At the southeastern end, the wall is "cut off" and lower by 1,06 meters, and has a height of 1,4 meters on the outside (Figure 14). In that part, the wall is the widest (102 centimeters). At 7,2 meters from the northwest side, the wall at the bottom, almost all the way to the ground, has an irregular hole about 70 centimeters wide and about 50 centimeters high (Figure 15).
This wall was built over a steep rock that is already a natural protection in itself, so it probably had an additional defensive role.
At its northwestern end, the wall rests vertically on a steep rock in which there is a hollow, basically rectangular in shape, most likely made by human hands, 52 centimeters wide, 90 centimeters high and up to 85 centimeters deep, in which there are several smaller hollows, just like shelf in the closet. I assume that this recess could have played the role of some kind of storage.
The second location, marked number 2 on the map, is located at GPS coordinates 43.35942, 16.30985, at an altitude of 65 meters. It is a wall 2,5 meters long, 77 centimeters high to approximately 2 meters, 76 centimeters wide, which runs approximately in the north-south direction. At the northern end of the wall, there is a vaulted opening in the wall, at ground level. I assume that it is a window that reached the ground level due to the collapse of the walls, that is, that the actual floor is somewhat lower, which could be confirmed or disproved by excavation. On the ground, I noticed stones arranged in a width of about 4,1 meters, which leads me to the conclusion that it is a room or a house leaning against a vertical rock on the southern side. This location was discovered by Nataša, and it was very overgrown, so we cleared it as much as we could for the purposes of photography, making sure not to cut the vegetation that holds the wall, because that would only contribute to further collapse.
The third location, marked number 3 on the map, is located at GPS coordinates 43.3599, 16.30977 at an altitude of 59 meters. At that place there is a wall with a total length of 27 meters, a width of about 1 meter, mostly collapsed, with a transverse load-bearing wall 2,8 meters long, 50-75 centimeters high and 80 centimeters wide. The orientation of the wall is northwest-southeast. At the northwestern end, only traces of plaster and the foundations of a 12-meter-long wall can be seen, and at the southern end, from the 15-meter-long transverse wall, a wall up to 150 centimeters high can be seen. On both ends and along the entire length of the wall on the outside, there are steep rocks that separate the inner part, i.e. the southern side, from the northern, western and eastern sides as a natural elevation. The wall, similar to location 1, provided additional protection to the inhabitants of the fort.
The entrance to the fort was approximately in the middle of the wall on the north side. They point to such a conclusion as hollows in the rock, a kind of natural stairs along which one can relatively easily climb up and down from the elevation. There is a very steep and impassable rock on the western side of the hill, and we did not see any traces of construction on that part, nor on the southern side, which descends very steeply into the sea. On the eastern side, there is visible dry stone wall in several places, which may have been created later, or was rebuilt later after the wall collapsed. Namely, the entire eastern side outside the walls is very steep and there are large amounts of stone on the ground, and we also came across pieces of plaster, which leads to the conclusion that once in the past there was a wall that connected locations 1 and 3, perhaps even along the route existing drywall. There is also a possibility that the dry wall above the slope that we climbed also had a defensive role, that is, that the defenders of the fort protected the wall by tearing down the dry wall against the attackers. In any case, this is a topic for future research by archaeologists, historians and other more professional people.
Descending over the rock to the foot of the fort on the north side, we followed the neglected old path along the dry wall to the north. Our goal was the location about 250 meters away that I mentioned at the beginning, which has the floor plan characteristics of an old building. After about half an hour of walking along the dry walls of the former olive groves and breaking through the thicket, we reached the steep rocks at our destination. We did not find any traces of construction by human hands or anything that would lead us to the conclusion that people had ever lived here before. It is interesting how nature achieved such an effect and arranged the rocks and stones in such a way that, viewed from above, they give the impression of a human building.
Concluding assumptions
And finally, I am free to state a few conclusions or assumptions about the location of Gradac. The location on a naturally protected hill is a characteristic of prehistoric settlements, and the discovery of a stone during the September campaign is an additional argument in support of the assumption that such a community existed here as well.
The stone walls connected with plaster in three locations have the characteristics of medieval fortifications, especially the fact that they were built in the continuation of natural steep rocks. With a fair amount of certainty, I am free to state that we have found the remains of three or even four roofed buildings with an area of ten square meters each. It is possible that there were several other such objects; such an assumption should be kept in mind, even though we have no basis for it at the moment. We did not find anything that would indicate the construction of the second floor. Namely, as a rule, the walls are 70-100 centimeters wide, which for the construction technique of the time was a characteristic of ground-floor buildings.
Furthermore, I assume that this is in no way a castle in which the Illyrian queen stayed, even occasionally, nor a significant military stronghold. Moreover, I am inclined to assume that it was a military observation post or a pirate hideout. Uvala Senjska is a very good natural shelter for the ships of that time, and the fortified position above the cove on a hill, protected on one side by steep rocks, and on the other three sides by the sea, seems to be a good strategic choice for a pirate shelter. I do not rule out the possibility that the building was a shelter for the inhabitants of Šolta themselves, who fled there in case of attacks by pirates or other enemies, or even that it was used by hermits.
I sincerely hope, personally and on behalf of my companions on both expeditions, that this record and photographs will encourage archaeologists to thoroughly investigate the location of Gradac in Senjska bay on the island of Šolta and come to conclusions that will disprove or confirm the popular legend about the castle of the Illyrian queen Teuta.
Order the book FRANGERE PANE: Stories about Frankopans by Tomislav Beronić.
The book is available at links
