Description

The site on which the church stands today is where there probably used to be a temple dedicated to Spes Augusta, to whom four dedicatory stone plaques have been found from various parts of the Empire, thanking the divinity for assistance received. The church is a notable example of Gothic architecture, built at the behest of the counts of Walsee, lords of Duino, between 1399 and 1472; the building was seriously damaged during the two world wars and rebuilt at the end of the 1940s. The single nave is characterised by a polygonal apse supported by robust sloping buttresses and five windows with trilobate double lunettes.