Material Cultural Heritage

Many cultural goods testifying to the rich history of the area are found in the Lastovo Archipelago Nature Park, especially on the islands of Lastovo and Sušac. Registered and protected cultural goods of the Lastovo Archipelago are divided in four categories:

• Cultural and Historical Ensembles 

The village of Lastovo is situated above fields. It has developed on a steep amphitheatre-shaped slope. Its present appearance dates back to the 15th and 16th century. The Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian and Duke's Palace stand out as the central part of the village. The oldest houses in Lastovo date back to the 15th century.

There are numerous individual cultural goods, but the interesting chimneys (locally called fumari) are definitely an attraction. They were presumably built to demonstrate the wealth of house owners. The chimneys are unique, none of them are the same and they indicate differences among households. They resemble minarets, although it is not known whether this is a coincidence, or whether they were copies of chimneys from Italian villages. Each new chimney was bigger than the previous ones and had more and more peculiar ornaments. Lastovo's inhabitants seemed to compete with their neighbours, so chimneys were also adorned with animal horns, which also served as protection against evil eyes. The chimney surrounded by bitter orange trees belonging to the renaissance house of the Antica – Biz family is believed to be the oldest one.

Lučica is the oldest preserved baroque fishermen's village in this part of Dalmatia. In this narrow cove, Lastovo's inhabitants started building stone houses at the beginning of the 17th century; they used them as storm shelters, fishing gear storages, fish salting area and they also pulled their boats out of the sea there.

• Ecclesiastical Architecture 

Of the island's 38 churches and chapels, some preserved, some ruinous, 21 are registered as protected cultural goods. Lastovo's inhabitants had them built for saints to watch over them on their daily life paths and protect them from hardships and illnesses. The oldest church – an Early Christian basilica in Ubli dates back to the 6th century. The oldest preserved chapel is St. Luke's from the 11th century. The Parish Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in the village of Lastovo was built in the 15th century and widened in the 17th century.

6^th century 

• Early Christian basilica in Ubli (archaeological site)

11^th century 

• St. Luke's Chapel
• St. George's Chapel on the island of Prežba (destroyed between the two world wars) 

11^th - 13^th century 

• St. Peter's Church in Ubli (destroyed in 1933)
• St. Cyprian (ruinous)
• St. Nicholas on Sušac (ruinous)

14^th century

• St. Barbara (ruinous)
• St. Mary in the Field (expanded at the beginning of the 16th century)
• St. Vitus (ruinous)
• St. Anthony the Abbot (expanded in the 17th century)
• St. Blaise (expanded several times)
• St. Michael
• St. Martin
• St. John the Baptist

15^th century 

• St. Mary on the Hill
• St. Cosmas and Damian (expanded in the 17th century)
• St. Nicholas
• St. George on Hum (ruinous)
• St. Lucy (ruinous)
• St. Thomas in Vinopolje (remains)
• St. Mary on Sušac (ruinous)
• Holy Trinity in Plehano Field (ruinous)
• St. Mary on Stomorina (remains)
• St. Cosmas on Kanzjan Hill (remains)
• St. John on Glavica (destroyed in 1607)
• church of unknown name in Njivice (Vinopolje, remains)
• church of unknown name in Bižonja Luka (Vinopolje, remains)

16^th century 

• St. Saviour in Pržina
• St. Raphael on Makarac (ruinous)
• St. Rock on Pjevor
• St. Elijah in Kolač
• St. Mark in Prgovo

17^th century 

• St. Joseph
• St. Augustine

18^th century

• • St.Vincent Ferrer

19^th century 

• St. George (private chapel in Jurjeva Luka bay)

20^th century 

• St. Jerome (private chapel in Skrivena Luka bay)
  St. Peter in Ubli

Parish Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian 

The parish church dedicated to twin doctors Cosmas and Damian was the gathering place of Lastovo's community. It was mentioned back at the beginning of the 14th century. Today's three-aisle church is the result of at least 2 construction phases. The central aisle dates back to the 15th century and the side aisles were added in the 16th / 17th century, which can be seen on the picturesque front, which has three separate roofs and three bell-gables. They were only added in the 18th century, in the neo-Gothic style.

The sacristy was built next to the apse in 1545 and the neo-Gothic belfry was made of the stone from Lastovo and erected in 1942. The inside of the church is furnished with stone furniture, paintings and ecclesiastical objects.

A baroque altar dominates the nave together with two smaller side altars, effectively overarched by ciboria from the 16th century. The one on the west side, dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy, is adorned with a two-faced wooden icon – one face featuring the Madonna with Child, and the other a crucifix between the Madonna and St. John the Apostle. The eastern side altar of the Holy Trinity bears one of the oldest works of art in this church – the painting of the Lamentation of Christ by Spanish artist Juan Boschetto from 1545. The altarpiece on the main altar depicting Sts. Cosmas and Damian was painted by Giovanni Lanfranco in 1633, when the old main altar was replaced by the new, stone one. Besides this altarpiece, five smaller paintings are placed around the altar - works by Giovanni Scrivelli depicting the Creator and St. Paul, Jerome and Joseph. The youngest is the large painting on the wall above the apse arch with a late Baroque figurative composition of the Last Judgement, painted in the 18th century.

• Secular Architecture

In the village of Lastovo, there are about forty architecturally valuable housing complexes from the period between the 15th and 19th century, which represent one of the most peculiar variants of Dalmatian, especially Dubrovnik historical housing architecture.

The Lastovo house is a distinct variant of the historical building culture in Dalmatia. It is the type of house stemming from the layout and vertical volume consistently divided into pars fructuaria on the ground floor and pars urbana on the first floor. Sular is characteristic of Lastovo houses. It is a terrace fenced with stone benches (pižuli) and stone vases (arle). Stone posts supported white grapevine pergolas. Furniture is also made of stone – sinks, water well crowns, seats, benches, tables, oil containers, etc.

• Archaeological Sites 

Pod Pozalicu Cave, Rača Cave, Illyrian hillfort settlements and all 11 prehistoric gomila - heaps of round piled stones, which mostly served as graves - are protected as prehistoric archaeological sites.

Also protected are ancient villae rusticae (remains of Roman walls) in the fields of Barje and Velja Lokva, in Skrivena Luka and Jurjeva Luka bays, at Lastovo's cemetery, and on the islands of Stomorina and Sušac, as well as the archaeological remains of the Roman settlement from the 1st century AD and the Early Christian basilica in Ubli from the 5th – 6th century.

The whole historical area of the island of Sušac, which was inhabited from the beginning of the Neolithic period until the late Middle Ages, is protected due to a large number of archaeological findings there (more than forty). There is a wide variety of Antique-Early Christian buildings on Sušac, the most prominent of which are the remains of St. Mary's Church from the 6th century.

A total of 18 underwater archaeological sites are registered within the Lastovo Archipelago Nature Park, of which a great majority is protected.