Hvar's historic theater, located in the very center of the city since 1612, is a heritage monument of national importance for the city and island of Hvar and the Republic of Croatia. The mentioned year is unique in the rich history of the city, which is still significant for the local community today, and thanks to the efforts of the Hvar Heritage Museum, the special curator at the time, prof. Mirjane Kolumbić, the Hvar theater is recognized as the third oldest theater in Europe and the first open to all citizens, regardless of class or class affiliation. On the importance of 1612, a quote from Mirjana Kolumbić:
ANNO SECVNDO PACIS MDCXII (the second year of peace 1612.)
Which peace? The peace established between centuries-old feuding estates of the Hvar commune. A peace that contributed to social justice, involvement in governance by previously disenfranchised people, and created the prerequisites for rehabilitating damaged communal facilities and their return to function. A peace that once again positioned the Hvar commune as one of the more significant administrations on the Adriatic coast for Venice. Notably, Semitecolo, who was fond of highlighting his achievements with stone plaques in golden letters, did not commemorate this peace with any marker that would glorify the victor. At that moment, neither victors nor vanquished were present. The peace benefited everyone. The construction of a theater as a space for a purpose almost unknown at the time and to a strictly utilitarian object of port infrastructure is a cultural precedent of European dimensions. The wide availability of a social facility in the communal space to all inhabitants of the commune, regardless of estate, property, and other differences, is a democratic leap that belongs exclusively and solely to the Hvar theatre.
Semitecolo, using communal funds (the annual revenue from stocks of grain and salt) and partially from church revenues, constructed a cultural monument, a space where cultural contents could be equally visited by both the privileged and the common people, the wealthy and the poor. He enabled the democratization of culture and, for the first time in Europe, abolished treating culture as a privilege of the nobility. The prince did not inform the authorities in Venice about this. He did not seek permission from the Doge of Venice, which itself did not have public theater halls in the early years of 1611/1612. He did not announce to Europe that in a small commune on the Adriatic coast, precisely in 1612, he had done something that, at that historical moment, none of the civilized centers of Europe was familiar with. Semitecolo built the first communal, municipal, public theater in Europe, which would irreversibly change the relationship to culture and create the possibility for cultural contents to be moved from the streets, squares, and even churches to come under a roof into a temple of culture – a theater building. Thus, Semitecolo, instead of on a stone plaque with golden letters on the wall of the arsenal, inscribed Hvar and the Hvar theater into the history of European and, thereby, global theater.
Kolumbić Šćepanović, M. (2020). 'Hvarsko povijesno kazalište - 1612.', Dani Hvarskoga kazališta, 46(1), p. 7-26.