Street of Lukovic family - Prcanj

Lukovic Street, with its luxurious palaces overlooking the sea, the Captain’s house with as many as 12 baroque balconies, and the ancient stone paving along the entire street front, according to numerous historians is at the very top of the artistic expression of the baroque profane architecture of streets in the South Adriatic.

 

Lukovic Street was the core of the public life of the 16th and 17th century. It is named after the Lukovic family houses, which have exceptionally elegantly decorated stone balustrades; the palaces follows the sea line, merging into the street front, and making a unique and indivisible ambient unit in a functional and aesthetic domain. Opposed to the houses towards the sea, so-called ‘ponta’ were made over the time, for accessing sailboats with a plateau on which cargoes from ships were landed, as well as small ports for binding family boats. The coastal belt was an indivisible private space and made up a whole with the palaces. In the later period, around 1805, when this region was already under the Austro-Hungarian empire, the emperor had the first coastal road built along the sea for military needs, thus completely interrupting the continuity of family gardens from the sea to the houses. This act changed forever the character of space, dividing it into two parts, one made up of family ports for boats with berths along the sea, and another made up of a paved street of the Lukovic family.  The seafront, including ponta and boat bindings, were private properties in the 19th century, characterized by traditional stone bindings, stone paving and stone sea-shores, with small gardens rich in Mediterranean vegetation. On the opposite side of the houses, there are elegant courts (avlije) with greenery, authentic stylish furniture and paved paths. Each ‘avlija’, or, artistic yard, has its own water well with a baroque stone hood; the pavement from the house to the well features  square plates of red and white stone, and each yard shows parts of artistic gardening masonry such as stone sinks and verandas on the stone pillars with capitals.

The entire area is an example of an authentic traditional urban settlement that had all the elements of urban character with a paved street, a ship’s harbour, a church and a very strong influence in the cultural movements of this region. In the last decade, many palaces and captains’ houses have been subjected to unprofessional restorations. Traditional roofs have been opened for the balcony, baroque balconies have been divided by concrete slabs, houses have built where does not exist before, and the coastal line was rebuilt by building new concrete piers and harbours.

Due to this all, today it is necessary to approach the integral protection of this region to preserve its original artistic and historical value and to protect it on a larger scale as a whole authentic ambient. Furthermore, it is extremely necessary to prepare an integral plan for the protection of the wider zone that affects the Lukovic Street, from the sea and the family ports, through the street front to the palace, with yards and fields behind the houses to the contact surfaces that touch the forests of Lekovina. All of this together should be included in the whole area of cultural landscape protection to avoid negative visual impacts on the very street of Lukovica, and in that way to avoid jeopardizing its outstanding universal value.

 

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HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:
Kusevic, B. (2017). Street of Lukovic family - Prcanj. ‘‘The Archive of Landscapes”. [date].

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BIBLIOGRAPHY.

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BACKGROUND PHOTO.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection | The Collection; (1693) Disegno Topografico del Canale di Cattaro, Montenegro; Coronelli, Vincenzo (1650-1718).

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