At the end of the 18th century my great -great -grandfather Jure came from Bosnia and started to build his family home, his court in Draga in a way typical for this area: stone houses, with stone roofs, positioned in a circle, with one entrance door facing
the street. In the middle of this circle there was a court, a family living room with a stone table in the middle and above the table there was a grape vine (brunac ) which provided shade for the members of the household during hot summer time. There was a cistern, essential for household chores and for watering the animals. When there would be nowater in the cistern, the members of the Jurlin family would go get water from the Bojana pond. All the house doors face the court. Why were the houses built to form a circle? There was a constant fear of the enemy (the Turks, outlaws, numerous armies that passed through this area), therefore, the outer walls with small windows served as loopholes and helped in defense against the enemies, at least psychologically. Moreover, this helped preserve family togetherness and intimate atmosphere inside the court. Zdravko Živković, architectural engineer, wrote the following in his book Croatian traditional architecture, next to the photos and the ground plan of the estate Jurlinovi dvori: “ One could say that the building complexes “dvori“ (court) in the Primošten hinterland are an endemic species because they do not appear anywhere else in the world in that kind of a shape is The Estate of Jurlinovi dvori in the village of Draga in Primošten Burnji is. One of those representative examples and it is presented on these pages.” Before Jurlija, his grandfather Roko (1807 – 1876) and his father Mate (1835 – 1903) lived in that type of estate. After the death of his father, Jure Jurlija got separated from his father’s estate and started building his estate of Jurlinovi dvori with the two houses he bought from the merchant Marinčić. 15 members of Jurlin’s family lived in those dvori, among them the author of this text, father Stipe Perkov. Dvori have been conserved in their original and authentic form and they are listed in the Registry of Cultural Heritage of Republic of Croatia.