St. Francis Monastery in Zadar is a Roman Catholic Franciscan monastery dating back to the 13th century. It grew from the hospice of St. Anthony the Abbot in the western part of the city, where, according to tradition, St. Francis of Assis took shelter during his stay in the city when he was “thrown by the winds opposite to the Slavonian soil” on his way to the Holy Land in 1212.

The church is the oldest Gothic church in Dalmatia. The construction of the current Monastery began in 1249 and was finished at the end of the century, so the church, the sacristy, the monastery wings and the original cloister were built. An important typological feature of the church is its three-apse rear structure, which the experts bring into connection with the Gothic architecture of Franciscans and Dominicans from Umbria and Veneto during the 13th century. The sacristy, in which the Peace of Zadar was signed in 1358, was also a chapel of St Louis and the chapter hall. Its significant rearrangement, with the furnishing of the choir and the sanctuary, took place at the end of the 14th century, when the General Chapter in Cologne proclaimed the monastery the seat of the Franciscan province of St Jerome for Dalmatia in 1393.

The choir rebuilding was completed by the mid-15th century with the construction of Giorgio da Sebenico’s podium on the site of the presumed earlier railing.

In World War II, it suffered major damage from the bombing and was briefly abandoned.    After the war it was reconstructed and returned to it’s original state, with deeper interventions in 1962, 1963, 1977 and 1980.

It has rich picture gallery as well as a collection of codices and parchments.