About Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik sits on the southern tip of Croatia's Dalmatian coast, and its walled Old Town is the reason people still call it the "Pearl of the Adriatic." The city's roots go back to the 7th century, when refugees from the destroyed Roman town of Epidaurum (today's Cavtat) settled nearby and founded Ragusa. A separate Slavic settlement grew alongside it, and by the 12th century the two had merged — the channel between them was filled in to create Stradun, the main street that still runs through the Old Town today. The modern city, now home to roughly 41,000 residents, remains the seat of Dubrovnik-Neretva County and one of the most visited destinations on the Adriatic.

History

Dubrovnik's independence was formalized in 1358, when the Treaty of Zadar ended Venetian rule and the city became the self-governing Republic of Ragusa. Its government was built to keep any one family from seizing power: the Rector, the republic's head of state, held office for a single month at a time and could not be reelected for two years, while a Major Council of noble families and a Senate of 45 members over the age of 40 handled the actual business of running the state. The system worked — the republic survived for more than four centuries by trading and negotiating rather than fighting. Ragusan merchant ships and consulates worked ports across the Mediterranean, and from the mid-15th century the republic paid an annual tribute to the Ottoman Empire in exchange for trading privileges that stretched deep into Ottoman territory and the Black Sea, letting a city of modest size punch well above its weight commercially.

The republic also had a genuine claim to being ahead of its time. In 1416, its Major Council banned the trade and transport of slaves by ship, a step that predated abolition in most of Europe and the Americas by centuries, even if domestic servitude did not disappear overnight. The city also opened one of the world's earliest quarantine stations, the Lazareti, in 1377, a public-health measure meant to keep plague off incoming ships. None of that protected Ragusa from geology: the earthquake of 1667 killed thousands, including the Rector and much of the nobility, and left the republic permanently weakened. It limped on for another 140 years until 1808, when Napoleon's marshal, Auguste Marmont, issued the proclamation that formally dissolved it.

Architecture and the Old Town

What survived is what people come to see now. The city walls run an unbroken 1,940 metres around the Old Town, reaching up to 25 metres high and, on the landward side, as much as six metres thick, built up in stages between the 13th and 17th centuries. Four fortifications anchor the circuit: the round Minčeta Tower to the north, built in the 1460s by the Florentine architect Michelozzo to hold off the Ottoman advance; Bokar Fortress, also his work, guarding the Pile Gate entrance; Revelin, which protected the old harbor and later served as the republic's administrative center; and Lovrijenac, a freestanding fort on a sea cliff outside the walls, sometimes nicknamed "Dubrovnik's Gibraltar."

Inside the walls, the Gothic-Renaissance Rector's Palace once housed the month-long rectors and now holds the city museum, the Baroque Church of St. Blaise honors the city's patron saint, and the Franciscan monastery is home to the third-oldest still-operating pharmacy in Europe, running continuously since 1317. UNESCO added the Old City of Dubrovnik to its World Heritage list in 1979, covering roughly 97 hectares of the walled center.

Islands and the Coast

Just offshore, the wooded island of Lokrum sits barely 600 metres from the Old Town harbor, its Benedictine monastery dating back to at least 1023 and its paths now roamed by peacocks alongside the swimmers. Further out lie the fourteen islands and islets of the Elafiti archipelago, of which only three — Koločep, Lopud and Šipan — are permanently inhabited today; they were historically part of Ragusa's maritime territory, and the coastline and islands remain as much a part of the draw as the Old Town itself, which is why so many visitors explore Dubrovnik by private gulet charter.

Modern Dubrovnik

The 20th century was not kind to the city. During the Croatian War of Independence, Yugoslav forces besieged Dubrovnik from October 1991 to May 1992, and on 6 December 1991 shelled the Old Town itself despite its UNESCO status, an attack that drew international condemnation and hardened support for Croatian independence. More than 220 people were killed in and around the city before the siege was lifted, and roughly 56% of the Old Town's buildings took some form of damage, with the walled city absorbing over 650 direct artillery hits. UNESCO placed the Old City on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 1991 and, after the Croatian government carried out roof repairs and facade restoration with UNESCO's technical and financial support, removed it again in December 1998. The cable car to Mount Srđ, which had opened in 1969, was wrecked by the shelling and did not reopen until 2010, nearly two decades later.

Peacetime tourism has since reshaped the city again. Lovrijenac fortress and the Old Town walls became known worldwide as the fictional King's Landing after HBO filmed much of Game of Thrones here, with Lokrum standing in for Qarth and the Jesuit Staircase used for one of the series' best-known scenes. The rebuilt cable car now carries visitors up Mount Srđ to the site of Fort Imperial, a stronghold Napoleon's engineers began building in 1806, for views that stretch across the Old Town, Lokrum and the Elafiti Islands on a clear day.