Kubus and Velebit Projects Through the Centuries

The Kubus at Stara Vrata and the road that connected the sea and the mountain

In the mid-19th century, during a time of major infrastructure projects by the Habsburg Monarchy, one of the most demanding and important routes in the Croatian region was born – the Gospić – Karlobag road across Velebit. In 1840, Josip Kajetan Knežić, a prominent officer of the Military Frontier and a master road builder, was commissioned to design and build a new 41-kilometer mountain road connecting the Lika hinterland with the Adriatic. The terrain survey and project design lasted from 1841 to 1843, assisted by his primary associate, Border Guard Lieutenant Simo Kekić.

Construction began in 1844 on the Gospić – Brušane – Oštarije section and lasted until 1846, while the section from Baške Oštarije to Karlobag was completed by Kekić alone. The road was designed with long, uniform, and gentle slopes not exceeding 5%, which made it extraordinarily modern even by today's standards. The roadway was up to six meters wide, reinforced with massive edge stones, with dry-stone retaining walls made of large blocks and a carefully designed drainage system. Contemporaries considered Knežić's road a masterpiece, comparable to his earlier works – the Jozefina and the Master’s Road.

At the highest point of this new Karlobag route, at the Stara (or Vela) Vrata pass, Knežić erected a stone monument known as the "Kubus" (also called "The Clock" by locals). Set in 1846, the Kubus was not a measuring instrument, but a representative marker of the road's completion and its peak. Shaped as a stone cube resting on four stone spheres, with an access staircase of 33 steps, it bears a German inscription marking the road's culmination point at the southern border of Velebit near Stara Vrata.

In the inscription, the height is expressed in Viennese feet (Wiener Fuß), the official unit of the Monarchy at the time, emphasizing the administrative and technical precision of the building system. The Kubus stands at approximately 869 meters above the Adriatic, offering a wide view toward Karlobag, the island of Pag, and the sea, as well as the interior of Lika. At this very spot, where the mountain and coast meet, the monument symbolically connects two worlds that the new road linked permanently for the first time. Like the fountain at the Ljubica spring in Baške Oštarije, which Knežić built in 1845, the Kubus was intended as a lasting sign of human success in the harsh mountain environment.

Josip Kajetan Knežić did not live to see the road's final completion to Karlobag. He died in 1848 in Senj, exhausted by decades of work in the demanding terrains of Lika and Velebit. However, his work remains permanently inscribed in the landscape. The Gospić – Karlobag road and the stone Kubus at Stara Vrata are rare and valuable witnesses to a time when engineering skill, state will, and the natural environment were merged into a unique whole. They speak not only of transport but of persistence, planning, and the long history of connecting the Adriatic with the interior.