Born in Arizona, moved to Babylona- no Croatia

I had pictures of the interior meant to show the fancy scroll work of the alter, the scope of the vaulted cielings, the enormous stained glass windows, and the numerous and massively gorgeous paintings that covered the walls, but alas, disposal cameras lack the strength of flash in order to properly capture such scope, regardless of how well lit the church seemed to be. What you see on the left is a picture from the interior of the Zagreb cathedral. Isn't there a disturbing resemblence between the gold plated mask of the founding Bishop on the left and the masks unearthed in Egyptian tombs?

However, the camera did pick up some of the lovely detail of the gold work, as well as the donation alter in front of the mask. The principle is this: you slip 5 kuna (about 1 american dollar) into a slot in the little table and you say a prayer to the Bishop. If you look closely at the silver placard - and I do think it's real silver, you'll notice an inscription. If you were to blow this up large enough to read it, you still wouldn't be able to read it if you don't read cyrillic (sp?). As a result I can't actually tell you what the Bishop's name was, but I gather he was pretty important. Especially since they have a life-size model dummy of his body laid out in a glass case as you see on the bottom right.

I could be mistake, but I think he's made of wax. I toyed with the notion that the pastiness of the skin was a result of him being a vampire, placed there to be contained by the crosses and holy water for the protection of others and himself, but the donation alter throws that theory all out of whack. However, one thing you can see in the picture that I wish came out a little better is the elaborate metal relief sculpture that forms the bottom part of the display. It depicted a beautifully rendered scene of the Bishop leading a congregation, with a bunch of crosses and a really tall hat on his head. Not as tall as the pope's hat, mind you, but a solid eight inches nonetheless.

There you have it folks. A lifesize wax sculpture hermetically sealed in glass. Really though, I must say, the interior of that church was quite striking and impressive.

Come back soon for the next installation of pictures.