Traces of the long and turbulent history, based on hundreds of years of tenacious resistance to invaders and the hard work of its inhabitants, have been preserved to this day and represent a first-class cultural heritage.

On the list of intangible cultural heritage, there are also sacral buildings in Križpolje, Lipice and Stajnica.

Comprising more than 750 exhibits, the national heritage collection, which tells us about the way of life and customs of our ancestors, certainly has an unavoidable historic value.

Apart from the Old Town Sokolac, the most important protected religious buildings are

CHAPEL OF ST. VID

The Church of St. Vid dates from the 14th century and is one of the oldest sacral buildings in Brinje. It is located not far from the centre of Brinje, at the foot of the hill Humac.

Today, it is occasionally used as a funeral chapel. It is a Gothic building with a pointed sanctuary and a bell tower on the main façade. The bell tower with an irregular ground plan is the best preserved part of the medieval church. On the façade, there are two coats of arms carved in stone; on the left is the old coat of arms of Frankopan family, and on the right the coat of arms of the Divinski princes. In 1365, Prince Hugo Divinski married the aunt of Prince Nikola IV. Frankopan, whose name still remains unknown. It is believed that the Chapel of St. Vid was built by the Divinski family in the 14th century. On the front wall of the tower, there is a stone bear head with front legs.

CHAPEL OF ST. FABIAN AND SEBASTIAN

Chapel of St. Fabian and Sebastian is a protected cultural monument of zero categories and one of the oldest sacral buildings in the municipality of Brinje. Chapel of St. Fabian and Sebastian is a single-nave sacral building with a round shaped sanctuary and a bell tower above the pediment of the main façade. “The layout of the chapel of St. Fabian and Sebastian is seemingly Romanesque, but this is a Romanesque retardation,” Zorislav Horvat states explicitly. He believes that the chapel of St. Fabian and Sebastian dates from the late 14th or early 15th century. The chapel may be a little older, and it’s certainly built in the later Romanesque style. In recent years the chapel has been restored. It is located near the urban core along the state road D-23 Duga Resa – Senj.

CHURCH OF ASSUMPTION OF BDM BLESSED VIRGIN MARY IN BRINJE

The parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brinje was first mentioned in 1388 as the church of St. Mary with the Augustinian monastery. In the church there is a tombstone of Bartol Frankopan, who was buried there in 1476; it was placed in front of the altar of St. Bartolomej. In the same year, Prince Ivan VIII Frankopan renounced some of his estates in the Brinje area in favour of the Augustinians, and later also of the Paulines, while the monastery was left to the Augustinians in accordance with the verdict brought in Senj in 1497. However, due to the threat from the Turks, it seems that they, like the Paulines, did not stay in the Brinje monastery for a long time, because in 1506 the Franciscans were mentioned, and in 1509 the Dominicans. In 1530, the Turks burned the church and the monastery. The monks left Brinje permanently, and the pastor retired to the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Sokolac.

The parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built by the well-known defender and liberator of Lika from the Ottomans, the priest Marko Mesić, born in Brinje, around the year 1700 on the remains of the older monastery church of St. Mary dating from 1476.

In 1895, Croatian historian Emilija Laszowski wrote that the Brinje monastery was located on the site where the vicarage was located in his time. In the construction plan dating from 1816, the vicarage was located across the street from the parish church, and much closer to the Josefina road from Karlovac to Senj than the church itself.

During the First World War (1914-1918), the bells were removed from the church in the village of Brinje, melted down and converted into artillery guns. The new bells were delivered and consecrated in 1924. In World War II (1941-1945), the church was largely destroyed in the Italian bombing in 1943. In the early 1960s, the renovation of the church was led by the entrepreneurial parish priest Ivan Kranjčec, who added up a vicarage next to the church, and held religious instruction in the chapel across the street from the church. During the restoration of the church, a fragment of a stone slab with a Glagolitic text dating from 1518 in memory of Prince Matijaš Čubranić was found, after wich it was transported from the cemetery to the chapel of St. Vid, located under the hill Humac.

Today, the parishes of the Brinje area belong to the Diocese of Gospić-Senj.

MILL VRETENAS

Once upon a time, in the Brinje valley, the sound of stone mill carts could be heard spinning at the numerous rapids of karst waters. To this day, one such millstone called Vretenaš, is preserved, whose stone carts can still be torn from sleepiness.

STONE BRIDGE

In the very centre of Brinje, on the Josephine Road, there is a stone bridge across the Gate Jaruga stream. It was built more than 200 years ago, in 1801, by the industrious hands of coastal and Brinje builders and stone-carvers. During the reconstruction, on the bridge was mounted a stone sphere.

BRONZE STATUE OF A MINER FROM BRINJE

Grown up in a harsh environment, the inhabitants of this region know all its secrets. The miners from Brinje were well known as builders of many roads and tunnels throughout the world. It is said that there is no tunnel in the world in the construction of which at least one inhabitant of Brinje did not participate. That is why today, in the centre of Brinje, there is a bronze statue of a miner, the work of the academic sculptor Kosta Angelini Radovani.

ZBIRNA NARODNA BLAGA

Stalna izložbena postava Zbirke narodnog blaga Općine Brinje vođena je idejnim nacrtom označavanja životne svakodnevice prosječno imućnijeg sloja brinjskog pučanstva u razdoblju od kraja 19. stoljeća do 70-ih godina 20. stoljeća, dakako, u okvirima samog izložbenog prostora i sukladno povijesno-vremenskom određivanju eksponata. Zbirka narodnog blaga sadrži preko 1200 eksponata. Posredstvom izloženih predmeta u ponutrici obiteljskog doma naznačuju se i istodobno stječu spoznaje o brojnim aspektima stanovanja, prehrane, odijevanja, rukotvorstva, likovnog senzibiliteta i stvaralaštva, fizičkoj i duhovnoj higijeni, obrazovanju i običajima, ali i o onim osjetljivim i neizgovaranim, socijalnim odnosima i porukama. Poseban dio odnosi se razna gospodarska pomagala i alat.

Među najstarijim darovanim predmetima treba spomenuti dvocijevni pištolj s paljenjem na kapislu Ridinger iz 1860.godine, ličku torbu kraj 19.stoljeća i gramofonsku ploču početak 20.stoljeća.