Dracevica was found late, by refugees from Poljica who settled on Brac by the Venetian ducal order of the 31st December 1574. The former settlement was a few kilometers further to the west, in Nerezine where we can still see today the remains of the houses. Dracevica was under the parish of Nerezisca which was far away. That is why at the beginning of the 17th century the Dracevljans moved to the present site, near the old pools with the natural alluviums next to the hills, towards the south and in front of Bunjas, one of the most spacious and most fertile karst fields on the island.
By their exceptional diligence the Dracevljans tilled the soil and sorted out stone to cultivate vineyards and olive-groves and thus made the place very prosperous in the 18th and the 19th century which lasted until phylloxera destroyed the vineyards. At the beginning of the 19th century Dracevica had 450 inhabitants: then after the First World War, emigration began and now it has 137 inhabitants, exactly the same as two centuries ago
Description. Dracevica is built harmoniously, following some intuitive scheme of space planning. From the large square with the well in its centre the wide footpaths start off spreading like beams of light. The square is girdled by high one-storey and two-storey houses that are encircled by yard-walls with the cisterns in front or in the houses and with the gardens with almonds behind the houses. At the beginning of the 20th century, Dracevica was the best maintained settlement on the island.
We can find there, however, some remains of ancient dwellings in deserted hovels with a kind of screen or without any partition at all, with earthen floors and small openings in the walls, with a fire-place in the middle and without any chimney, similiar to the kind we find in almost all of the Brac settlements. There we also find a few cone-shaped little houses in the yards that serve as sties, store-rooms, kitchens or winecellars. Almost every house has its own well, apart from those numerous arched ones in vineyards and fields. So many walls cannot be found in any other place on the island.
Dracevica is open towards the western Brac coast with a large valley. From in it Maestral brings the breath of the sea and the freshness of the afternoons. Research has shown that Dracevica is on the best possible site regarding the mingling and influence of sea and mountain air.
Monuments. It is not by mere chance that we find here the remains of Roman life. On the two-peaked hill of Trscenik there is a Kostirna (Lat. cisterna dug out in living stone, a cover of a sarcophagus that now serves as a cattle water-trough and a stone seat. Some Roman coins were found on krkanje brdo. (Lat. circinatus, circled), on the hrma glavica, on the site of the older church of St. Cusma and Damian, while Roman steles are built into the walls of the houses.
When the Dracevljans from Nerezine moved over to this place at the beginning of the 17th century they dug out Kostirna on the krkanja brdo (The Hill of Krkanj). In 1674 they raised a church dedicated to the holy physicians, Cusma and Damian. The cemetery was raised next to the church. At the beginning of the 18th century, (in 1705) Dracevica became a curacy and in 1738 the present parish church was raised with a triangular gable, in the quiet and simple lines of the pre-Romanesque style. There is an interesting wooden altar with the painting of the Immaculate Conception which is strongly reminiscent of Tironi’s painting in the church in Supetar.
The walls of the biggest windmill on Brac, set on Glavica, dominate the village. According to historical sources, on this island always in want of flour, there were hundreds of mills. It is quite possible that the majority of mills referred to grindstones which are also numerous here in Dracevica.
The impression of the slow destruction of this beautiful village is still more reinforced with the burnt-out remains of the biggest houses round the square, which have been left from the war time to remind us to the occupier’s revenge.