Sveta Nedilja, officially known as Sveta Nedjelja, is a small village on the Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

n island of Hvar

Hvar

- Climate :The climate of Hvar is characterized by mild winters and warm summers. The yearly average air temperature is , 686 mm of precipitation fall on the town of Hvar on average every year and the town has a total of 2800 sunshine hours per year. For comparison Hvar has an average of 7.7...

. It is located near the town of Hvar

Hvar (town)

Hvar is a city and port on the island of Hvar, part of Split-Dalmatia County, Croatia. The municipality has a population of 4,138 while the city itself is inhabited by 3,672 people, making it the largest settlement on the island of Hvar...

 and it has 148 residents (2001).

History

Nedilja lies on a sheer cliff at the foot of Sv. Nikola (St. Nicholas; 626 metres) the highest peak of the island, below a cave which was inhabited back in the Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

.

The cave served as the site for an Augustinian monastery in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. The monastery, which existed from the 15th century to 1787, was built in a large opening of the cave where there is also a spring. Today, only the monastery church and a part of a shell of a house are preserved.

The village, which lies half way to the cave, is reached from the sea by a winding path which snakes up through pine

Pine

Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...

 woods. A new church was built in the village this century. It has a painting "St. Jerome and the Saints" by Baldassare d'Anna

Baldassare d'Anna

Baldassare d'Anna was an Italian painter of the late-Renaissance period. Born in Venice to a Flemish family, and trained with Lionardo Corona. The date of his death is uncertain, but he seems to have been alive in 1639. For a number of years he studied under Corona, and on the death of that...

, and a crucifix

Crucifix

A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....

 by Juraj Plančić (1899–1930).

Sv. Nedjelja is famous for its good quality wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 Plavac Mali

Plavac Mali

Plavac Mali, a cross between ancestral Zinfandel and Dobričić grapes, is the primary red wine grape grown along the Dalmatian coast of Croatia...

and for its beautiful beaches.