CITY CEMETERY AND CHURCH OF ST. JOHN AND ST. ROCH

City Cemetery and Church of St. John and St. Roch

Until the mid-19th century, the Metkovo population was buried around the then church of St. Elijah, and in 1855 the first burial was recorded at the site of today's City Cemetery of St. John of Nepomuk. The cemetery is interesting today because it shows the composition of the Metkovo population in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, which, in addition to the indigenous population, also included people from various parts of the then empire, as evidenced by their tombs that have survived to this day, some of which, in their design, show the characteristics of the artistic styles of the time. It is interesting that the cemetery also contains several tombs that testify to infectious diseases from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the tomb of Fabiana Gluščević and the Majić family. The cemetery also contains a tomb that is an early work of the famous Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović. In the period from 1878 to 1889, the cemetery was a kind of fortification used by the Austrian army during the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within the cemetery there is also a votive church of St. John of Nepomuk and St. Roch, which was built immediately before the cemetery, and today serves as a cemetery church, and the cemetery itself is named after it.