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DUBROVNIK

Dubrovnik was first settled by Roman refugees in the early seventh century, when the nearby city of Epidaurus (now Cavtat) was sacked by the Slavs. They took up residence on the southern part of what is now the old town, then an island, and gave their settlement the name Ragusa. The Slavs, meanwhile, settled on the wooded mainland opposite, from which the name Dubrovnik (from dubrava , meaning a "glade") came. Before long the slim channel between the two was filled in and the two sides merged, producing a Latin-Slav culture unique to the region. Sandwiched between Muslim and Christian powers, Ragusa exploited its favourable position on the Adriatic with a maritime and commercial genius unmatched anywhere else in Europe at the time, and by the mid-fourteenth century, having shaken off the yoke of first the Byzantines and then the Venetians, had become a successful and self-contained city state, its merchants trading far and wide. Dubrovnik fended off the attentions of the Ottoman Empire with cunning and pragmatic obsequiousness - and regular payment of enormous tributes. It continued to prosper until 1667, when an earthquake killed around 5000 people and destroyed many of the city's buildings. Though the city-state survived, it fell into decline and, in 1808, it was formally dissolved by Napoleon.

The City
The main entrance to Dubrovnik's old town ( stari grad ) is the Pile Gate , a fifteenth-century construction decorated with a statue of St Blaise (Sv Vlaho), the city's protector, set in a niche above the arch. Inside, and accessible from the Pile Gate, the best way to get your bearings is by making a tour of the city walls ( gradske zidine ; daily: summer 9am-9pm; winter 9am-4pm; 15kn), 25m high and with all its towers intact. Some parts date back to the tenth century, but most of the original construction was undertaken in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with subsequent rebuildings (and reinforcements) being carried out over the years. Of the various towers and bastions that punctuate the walls, the Minceta fortress , which marks the northeastern side, is perhaps the most impressive, built in 1455 to plans drawn up by Dalmatian architect Juraj Dalmatinac and the Italian Michelozzi.

Within the walls, Dubrovnik is a sea of roofs faded into a pastel patchwork, punctured now and then by a sculpted dome or tower. At ground level, just inside the Pile Gate, Onofrio's Large Fountain , built in 1444, is a bulbous-domed affair at which visitors to this hygiene-conscious city had to wash themselves before they were admitted any further. Across the street is the fourteenth-century Franciscan Monastery complex (Franjevacki samostan; free access); its treasury (daily 9am-4/5pm; 5kn) holds some fine Gothic reliquaries and manuscripts tracing the development of musical scoring, together with relics from the apothecary's shop, dating from 1317, which claims to be the oldest in Europe.

From outside the monastery church, Stradun (also known as Placa), the city's main street, runs dead straight across the old town, its limestone surface polished to a slippery shine by the tramping of thousands of feet. Its far end broadens into the pigeon-choked Luza Square , the centre of the medieval town and even today hub of much of its activity. On the left, the Sponza Palace was once the customs house and mint, a building which grew in storeys as Dubrovnik grew in wealth, with a facade that's an elegant weld of florid Venetian Gothic and quieter Renaissance forms; dating from 1522, its majestic courtyard is given over to contemporary art exhibitions (opening times and prices variable). Across the square, the Baroque-style Church of St Blaise (Crkva svetog Vlaha), built in 1714 to replace an earlier church, serves as a graceful counterpoint to the palace. Outside the church stands the carved figure of an armoured knight, usually referred to as Orlando's Column . Surprisingly for such an insignificant-looking object, this was the focal point of the city-state: erected in 1428 as a morale-boosting monument to freedom, it was here that government ordinances were promulgated and punishments executed. Orlando's right arm was also the standard measurement of length (the Ragusan cubit); at the base of the column you can still see a line of the same length cut in the stone. On the eastern side of the square a Gothic arch leads through to an alley which winds past the Dominican monastery (Dominikanski samostan). Here, an arcaded courtyard filled with palms and orange trees leads to a small museum (daily 9am-5/6pm; 10kn), displaying outstanding examples of local sixteenth-century religious art.

Back on Luza, a street leads round the back of Sv Vlaho towards the fifteenth-century Rector's Palace (Knezev dvor), the seat of the Ragusan government, in which the incumbent Rector sat out his month's term of office. The building was, effectively, a prison: the Rector had no real power and could only leave with the say-so of the nobles who elected him. From the palace atrium an imposing staircase leads up to the balcony; the former state rooms lead off here, including the rooms of the city council, the Rector's study and the quarters of the palace guard. Today these are given over to the City Museum (Gradski muzej; summer daily 9am-6pm; winter Mon-Sat 9am-2pm; 10kn), though for the most part it's a rather paltry collection, with mediocre sixteenth-century paintings and dull furniture. The highlight is the work of the fifteenth-century Dalmatian artist, Blaz Jurjev, notably a polyptych of Our Lady .

Immediately south of the palace, Dubrovnik's seventeenth-century Cathedral is a rather plain building, although there's an impressive Titian polyptych of The Assumption inside. The Treasury (Riznica; daily: summer 9am-8pm; winter 9am-noon & 3-6pm; 5kn) boasts a twelfth-century skull reliquary of St Blaise, an exquisite piece in the shape of a Byzantine crown, stuck with portraits of saints and frosted with delicate gold and enamel filigree work. Even more eye-catching is a bizarre fifteenth-century Allegory of the Flora and Fauna of Dubrovnik in the form of a jug and basin festooned with snakes, fish and lizards clambering over thick clumps of seaweed.

From the cathedral, it's a short walk through to the small town harbour, dominated by the monolithic hulk of the Fort of St John (Tvrdjava svetog Ivana). The fort has been refurbished to house a downstairs aquarium (Akvarium; summer daily 9am-9pm; winter Mon-Sat 9am-1pm; 15kn), full of local marine life; upstairs is the maritime museum (Pomorski muzej; summer daily 9am-6pm; winter Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; 10kn), which traces the history of Ragusan sea power through a display of naval artefacts and model boats.

Walking back east from here, you skirt one of the city's oldest quarters, Pustijerna , much of which predates the seventeenth-century earthquake. On the far side, the church of St Ignatius , Dubrovnik's largest, is a Jesuit confection, modelled, like most Jesuit places of worship, on the enormous church of Gesù in Rome. The steps that lead down from here also had a Roman model - the Spanish Steps - and they sweep down to Gunduliceva Poljana , the square behind the cathedral which is the site of the city's morning fruit and vegetable market. The statue in the middle is of Ivan Gundulic, the early seventeenth-century poet and native of Dubrovnik who wrote a long poem, Osman , on the battles between the Turks and Christian Slavs, and after whom the square is named. From here, Od Puca leads west through the maze of streets that make up the city centre, stepped alleys branching right to meet the southern sea-walls. One of these, Siroka Ulica, leads to the house of Marin Drzic at no. 7 (Mon-Sat 9am-2pm; 10kn). Dubrovnik's greatest sixteenth-century playwright is remembered here in an imaginative display (featuring English headphone commentary and a short video), which manages to conjure up something of the city's Renaissance past.

The main city beach is a short walk east of the old town - noisy and crowded with radios and flirting adolescents. There's an equally crowded, but somewhat cleaner, beach on the Lapad peninsula 5km to the west. The best bet is to catch one of the boats from the old city jetty (April-Oct 9am-6pm, every 30min, journey time 10min; 25kn return) to the wooded island of Lokrum . Reputedly the island where Richard the Lionheart was shipwrecked, Lokrum is crisscrossed by shady paths overhung by pines. Extensive rocky beaches run along the eastern end of the island, and there's a nudist section (FKK) at the far eastern tip.

 

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