Church of St. Veneranda was built in 1561 by the Venetian authorities to serve Greek Catholic sailors in the service of the Venetian Republic. Alongside the Greek Catholic altar, another Catholic altar was raised in 1685 and dedicated to St. Francis. During the Russian invasion on Hvar in 1807 the monastery and the church were damaged. In 1811 the French invaders turned the monastery into a fort. In the mid-19th century the complex was sold to the renowned natural scientist Grgur Bučić, who founded one of the first weather stations in Croatia in 1858.