Franciscan Monastery

The Franciscan Monastery sits right on the Stradun, Dubrovnik's main street, and most people go for one specific reason: the old pharmacy. It opened in 1317, originally to treat the friars, but was quickly opened to the public too — and it's still dispensing today, which makes it the third-oldest pharmacy in the world, after ones in Baghdad and Padua, and one of the oldest still operating anywhere.

The monastery's cloister dates to 1360, built in late Romanesque style with 120 columns and 12 pilasters by the local master Mihoje Brajkov of Bar — it's one of the calmer corners of the Old Town, with an orange and palm garden at its center.

The church itself wasn't so lucky. The 1667 earthquake that devastated Dubrovnik destroyed most of it, and it had to be rebuilt in Baroque style. The one thing that survived is the portal facing the Stradun: carved in 1498 by the workshop of brothers Leonard and Petar Petrović, it shows a Pietà flanked by St. Jerome and St. John the Baptist, Gothic in form but already hinting at the Renaissance.

Upstairs, the monastery library holds around 20,000 books, including 1,200 old manuscripts and 137 incunabula — the richest old library collection in Croatia. Both the library and the bell tower took damage during the 1991 war and have since been restored.

It's a short walk from the Old Town harbor, an easy stop before or after a Dubrovnik gulet cruise.