“His majesty the Emperor and King Franz Joseph I passed this way and saw Manojlovac”
On the 17th of April 1875, the Austrian Emperor and the Croatian-Hungarian and Czech King Franz Joseph I and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria visited the Manojlovac waterfall, the highest waterfall on the Krka River, as part of their trip through Dalmatia. The emperor and the empress were welcomed by the inhabitants of Kistanje, headed by the municipal chief Janković, where an imperial lunch was prepared for them.
Interesting descriptions of the emperor’s visit can be found in the press of that time. The newspaper Narodni list described in detail how the emperor and empress visited this area, rich both in the archaeological remains at Burnum and the Manojlovac waterfall. It is stated that the emperor went down the old Roman road, which once could be travelled by carriage, all the way to the Krka River itself and the waterfalls there, where he visited the complex of mills and watermills.
The local inhabitants welcomed Franz Joseph I in festive attire, along with the sounds of folk music and songs and dance in honour of the ruler, who was popular among the people due to a series of agrarian reforms. However, his wife, the Empress Elisabeth, was much more popular, and the women of Kistanje presented a hundred of the finest embroidered handkerchiefs to her, which were a mandatory fashion detail in those days. As part of that trip, Emperor Franz Joseph I and the Empress Elisabeth also visited Skradin, the Skradinski buk waterfall, and Šibenik.
In commemoration of the emperor’s visit, a renovated memorial plaque was ceremonially opened in 2011 on the newly arranged path that leads to the viewpoints from which the Manojlovac waterfall can be seen. In 1899, Joso Modrić installed a plaque with the emperor’s image and an accompanying text on a rock popularly known as the Emperor’s Head as a gift to the inhabitants of Kistanje. A great ceremony was held on that occasion, as shown by photographic records, unlike the emperor’s visit, which was not recorded in photographs. Since that plaque was destroyed at some point, a replica of the medallion with the image of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth was made based on the photographs, and the stone plaque on which it was located was also restored. Below the bronze cast of the emperor is the inscription: “His majesty the Emperor and King Franz Joseph I passed this way and saw Manojlovac.”
