There is no country in the world whose cultural heritage and artistic contribution can be regarded as equally valuable through all the periods of its history. H. Taine proved this long ago, writing about the creative peaks attained by Greece in the Antiquity, Italy during the Renaissance and the Netherlands during the Baroque. Altough Croatia has valuable works of art and architecture from every cultural epoch, from Prehistory to the present, particularly valuable and noteworthy is the heritage from the period of the ancient Greek colonization and Roman urbanization, found by the Croatian settlers in the 7th century. However, the periods in which the achievements of Croatian art became an unavoidable part of the European cultural scene are the Pre-Romanesque, the Renaissance and the 20th century. Croatian culture is an integral part of the West European culture and, at the same time, its most extended branch towards southeastern Europe. Still, Croatia's heritage is very unique, since here, throughout history, four cultural circles (from all four directions of the world) have met and interwined: the European West and East, the middle European North and the Mediterranean South. This meeting of cultures and its synthesis is reflected in some distinctive monuments of art.