Gruz Port

Most visitors fly into Dubrovnik and never see Gruz, the working harbour on the other side of the peninsula from the Old Town. But it's the city's real maritime gateway, where the ferries, cruise ships and charter yachts actually dock.

From Ragusan Summer Retreat to Working Port

Gruz Bay has been used as a natural anchorage for centuries, sheltered enough that it once served as a summer retreat for wealthy Dubrovnik families, and a few of their old summer houses still stand around the bay. From the 13th century onwards, and especially through the 16th century, Gruz functioned almost as a separate town from Dubrovnik itself, a suburb of stone villas and walled gardens where the patricians of the Republic of Ragusa escaped the crowded streets inside the walls. The Dominican church of the Holy Cross, dating from 1437, survives from that era, and the district today holds around 15,000 residents.

The bay lies at the entrance to the Ombla, the short river that emerges from the karst behind the city, and it stays calm even when the northerly bora blows down off the highlands, which is the practical reason the harbour ended up here rather than beside the Old Town. From 1910 until 1970 it was also the terminus of Dubrovnik's tram line; the service ended after a fatal accident in which a tram left the rails and came to rest in the park in front of Pile Gate.

Berths, Ferries and Catamarans

Today the port handles a large wharf for cruise liners alongside about 20 berths for yachts. The main cruise quay runs 810 metres with two berths, completed in 2009 at a cost of some 26 million euros, and a second 230-metre quay with one further berth followed in 2011. It's the departure point for regular year-round ferries to the Elaphiti Islands, meaning Kolocep, Lopud and Sipan, as well as Mljet and Lastovo. From spring onward, fast catamarans run to Korcula, Hvar, Brac and Split, with seasonal connections to Bari in Italy and Kotor and Budva in Montenegro. Jadrolinija handles most of the car ferries, while TP Line and Krilo Kapetan Luka operate much of the fast catamaran traffic.

Getting Into the Old Town

The terminal address is Obala Stjepana Radica, and Dubrovnik's main Libertas bus station sits immediately alongside it, which is why almost every arrival by sea and every long-distance coach converges on the same stretch of waterfront. It's a classic stop on a Dubrovnik blue cruise itinerary, close enough to the Old Town, about 3 km away, that a shuttle bus or short taxi ride gets you to Pile Gate in minutes. City bus lines 1A and 1B cover the same route for a fraction of the price, and walking it takes roughly 45 minutes along the harbour and up over the hill.

Around the Bay

Gruz has more going on than a transit point usually does. The open-air Gruz market on the waterfront is the city's main produce, meat and fish market, considerably larger and cheaper than the small morning market inside the walls, and it is where the restaurants along the quay buy their catch. Nearby, the Museum of Modern Art near Banje Beach holds close to 300 works by Cavtat-born painter Vlaho Bukovac, and the Old Town's main street, Stradun, is still the place to shop for Konavle embroidery and local silverwork.

Behind the harbour the water narrows into the Rijeka Dubrovacka, a drowned river valley roughly 5 kilometres long and 200 to 400 metres wide, reaching depths of about 26 metres. It is fed by the Ombla, one of the shortest rivers in Europe, which surfaces from a cave at the foot of the Golubov Kamen massif and runs barely 30 metres before widening into that estuary; the intake plant at Komolac draws roughly 560 litres a second from it and supplies Dubrovnik with its drinking water. The customs post for international sailings sits down at the terminal, so ferries to Italy and Montenegro clear here rather than anywhere near the Old Town.

Rising over the head of the bay is the Franjo Tudjman Bridge, a 518-metre cable-stayed span carrying the D8 road across the mouth of the Rijeka Dubrovacka. Designed in 1989, abandoned when the Croatian War of Independence broke out, restarted in 1998 and opened on 21 May 2002, it now frames the view from every ship coming into Gruz: the first thing most passengers photograph, and the last thing they see on the way out.