The Place Where Vitus Stands: A Manor, a Curia, and the Story of One Estate

Every place has a history longer than what stands on it today. The estate that is home to Vitus winery and hotel is no exception. Long before the winery was built here, before the old curia was restored, this was part of a feudal estate organised around a manor that still stands on the neighbouring hill. The story is worth telling, because it is part of what Vitus is.

The Working Side of the Estate

Vitus winery and hotel stand on land that once held the working buildings of a manorial estate. Such an estate was clearly divided: the representative grounds with the manor and its park on one side, and the working zone - where the land was farmed, stored, and lived from - on the other. Vitus grew up precisely on that working side of the estate, which, when you think about it, is a fitting place for a winery to begin.

The hotel building itself, which also houses the archive cellar, occupies a restored curia - an older noble residence, more modest in scale than the manor. The winery, in turn, was built as a contemporary structure suited to the production and ageing of wine. So the old and the new stand side by side: a curia that remembers, and a cellar that looks ahead.

The Manor on the Hill

A hundred or so metres from the estate, atop a rise, stands Mirkovec Manor. It is not part of the Vitus estate, but it sits at the heart of this place's story - because the curia and the manor once shared the same land and the same fate.

The manor is remarkable for one reason that sets it apart in the entire region: its oldest core, the east wing from the 17th century, is the earliest surviving example of a single-wing manor in Hrvatsko Zagorje, the Zagorje region of northern Croatia. It was built in the time of the Mirkovečki family, originally for defence - a two-storey structure of the kind that was common in those unsettled centuries.

In the 18th century, two new wings were added, to the north and west, and the manor took on its three-wing, U-shaped form. It thus belongs to the group of multi-wing Baroque manors of Zagorje - buildings that bear witness not only to the architectural fashions of their age, but also to the way of life of the highest social class of the time.

All Who Passed Through These Doors

Owners came and went, as they tend to. After the Mirkovečki family, the manor passed through the hands of the Špičko and Škarica families, before coming to the Bedeković family in the 18th century. In 1892 it was bought by Ernest Vranyczany-Dobrinović, a member of one of Croatia's more prominent noble families. After them came the manor's last private owners.

Each family left its mark. The most visible is that of the Vranyczany-Dobrinović family: with their arrival, the park around the manor was laid out in the spirit of English landscape gardening - freer and more natural, with the emphasis on the landscape rather than on strict geometry. Within that park, now a century old, there were once fishponds as well.

A Tradition We Continue

When you look at the arboretum and the water features around the Vitus estate, you are not looking at something invented from scratch. The horticultural story of this place is a full century older than we are. A park laid out in the English style, fishponds, a careful regard for the landscape - this is a tradition that we, on our side of the former estate, are continuing in our own way. You can read more about what we plant and protect in our blog What Grows Around the Winery: The Story of a Park Coming Back to Life.

The manor and its park still form a harmonious whole and remain a witness to the age in which they were built. And now, a hundred metres away, they have gained a new neighbour - a winery returning to the same patch of Zagorje soil with a story of its own.

Same Place, New Story

The history of this estate is not a straight line. Owners changed, uses changed, the boundaries of the property changed. What remains is the place itself - the hill, the valley, the land that for centuries carried the manor, the curia, and the working buildings alike. Vitus is the newest layer of that story.

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