Today’s parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, topographically situated at the highest part of the village, is a single-nave hall church laid in the direction north-south, with a large rectangular apse protruding on the northern side. On the east side of the apse there is the sacristy, and along the west wall of the apse there is the chapel of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in 1505. The façade on the southern side is shaped in the Classicistic style with three rectangular openings, a portal and a pair of laterally placed windows and two semi-circular niches, symmetrically placed into the outer face of the façade wall. There are two chapels situated along the eastern wall of the church hall. The one closer to the entrance is dedicated to Our Lady of Rosary and dates from the 15th century, while the second one, today walled-in, is the chapel of the Presentation of Mary, the so-called Šegina chapel from 1546. The luxurious gilded Renaissance wooden altar is situated on the main church altar. The central place is taken by the altar painting representing the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
There are no material or written sources witnessing the beginning of the establishment of the church and the parish church itself in Vrbnik. The first document about the village cathedral and the parish priest dates from 1325 from the Statute of the Brotherhood of St John the Baptist in Vrbnik. The Statute mentioned the priest Damjan and the Vrbnik parish church of St Mary. The church got its today’s appearance through late-Medieval and early Modern Era reconstructions, but there is still no physical evidence about the original church in Vrbnik.
The description of the apostolic visitor Agostino Valier in 1579 is so far the most important source for the church’s appearance before the reconstructions at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, with Valier describing it as a smaller three-nave church with many altars, too small for the population.
A major reconstruction followed soon after Valier’s description, which deleted all the existing elements and the church was oriented north-south. This reconstruction demolished the church of St John the Evangelist, mentioned in the canonical visitation from 1565 as a separate edifice, detached from the parish church and used as a baptistery.
Recent archaeological research conducted in the smaller garden discovered the remains of an older edifice along the church façade with a semicircular wall, perhaps an apse of an older sacral edifice which preceded the today’s church.
The bell tower, the indispensable motif of the Vrbnik landscape, is located to the west of the church. It was built in 1527, which is witnessed by the Glagolitic inscription at its entrance. It had four bells – three large ones and one smaller one.