After an early breakfast we were on the local bus at 08:00 and heading down into Dubrovnik’s old town which is three kilometres from our Ivka hotel.
Even at this early hour we were surprised to see how much the crowd was building up at the main Pile Gate with several large tourist buses arriving just as we did.
With our Dubrovnik Card in hand we decided that our first venture into this tourist jungle was to do the walk on the city wall.
The walls surround the entire old town and extend on an approximately rectangular path for just under two kilometres. At their highest point they are 25m high and there are wall sections that are 12m thick. Along the way around the wall we passed five fortresses and about twenty towers. The construction of the walls commenced in the 8th century and continued on more or less continuously until the 16th century. Restoration continues even nowadays particularly as there was much damage caused by mortar and shelling attacks during the war with Serbia in 1991-1992. The walk around the wall took us about two hours and with a blue sky and sunny conditions the old town with its picturesque monuments, orange tiled rooftops, bell towers, fountains and forty eight churches looked like a picture postcard. The view out to sea across the blue, crystal clear Adriatic waters to the distant islands was equally impressive.
View from town wall, Dubrovnik old town
View from town wall, Dubrovnik old town
View from town wall, Dubrovnik old town
Belltower from town wall, Dubrovnik old town
Great fountain, Dubrovnik old town
View from town wall, Dubrovnik old town
Once back down in the main town street our intention was to stroll at a leisurely pace along the 300m thoroughfare called the Stradun starting at the Pile Gate.
The Pile Gate dates back to 1471 and is approached from outside the walls across a wooden drawbridge which is no longer lifted at night time. Set into a niche here in the stone arch above the gate is a statue of St. Blaise, the city’s patron saint.
The Stradun is paved in marble which was very slippery when we were here last night after the rain-storm. Apparently the Stradun was originally a marshy channel which separated the Roman settlement of Ragusa on one side from the Slavic settlement of Dubrovnik on the other. At the Pile Gate end of the Stradun is the Great Fountain which was completed by the Neapolitan architect Onofrio della Cava in 1444 as part of the city’s plumbing. Unfortunately much of the upper domed and highly ornamental section was destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 1667.
Near the steps up to the wall is the tiny Church of Our Saviour, built in 1528. Its architects and builders the Andrijic brothers made the foundations and structure particularly sturdy because there had been an earthquake in 1520 and consequently it survived the massive quake of 1667. The Renaissance façade and elegant rose window are most attractive and yet simple in their design.
Just a few steps further down the Stradun is the Franciscan Monastery and Museum. The Monastery door is crowned by a pieta which was the only part that survived the earthquake of 1667. This earthquake started a fire that gutted the building and countless treasures were lost forever. It was rebuilt in the 18th century.
Cloister & old pharmacy, Dubrovnik old town
Old pharmacy, Dubrovnik old town
As part of the Monastery there is the famous ancient pharmacy self-proclaimed as the ‘oldest in the world’. It was established in 1317 and all that remains now are some ancient pharmacopoeias, medical equipment and religious artefacts. There is also a portrait of Ruder Boskovic who was a famous mathematical genius from Dubrovnik. The courtyard of the pharmacy is surrounded by cloisters with rows of double octagonal columns surmounted with intricate and individualised capitals.
Towards the end of the Stradun we passed Orlando’s Column and the Church of St. Blaise. At this corner is the impressive Clock Tower and a walkway that took us outside the wall and into the Old Port and harbour precinct. This was a hive of activity with tourist boats, glass-bottomed boats and even a semi-submersible submarine offering tourists the opportunity of seeing the pristine and crystal clear waters of the Adriatic. We were so impressed with the water clarity and ocean calmness that the thought of a dive was on our minds but not possible for obvious reasons of time constraints.
We found our way around the harbour’s edge to an entrance that led us up to the Maritime Museum where we spent a very enjoyable, interesting and highly informative hour in the two storey facility. There was much to see and read but amongst the information was the key feature of Dubrovnik being a major trading hub for the Adriatic over the past millennium. There were many sailor portraits, paintings of ships, ship models and photographs. Undoubtedly the most striking photographs were of the harbour during the war against the Serb and Yugoslav armies in1991-92 showing boats burning and some vessels partially sunk!
Almost by chance our meanderings in the back streets of the old town brought us to the Natural History Museum which we had intended to find later on. We were the only visitors in the three storey museum which had a near total focus on marine natural history. There were separate rooms dedicated to gastropods, cephalopods and fish plus a display of underwater photography by Dalibor Andres. His gallery of mostly macro-photographs of nudibranchs, tropical fish and corals was truly first-class. A section nearby was dedicated to rare and endangered molluscs within the Adriatic. Amongst the very rare gastropods were three cypraea (cowries).
Venus flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum), Natural History Museum, Dubrovnik old town
Another highly interesting display was dedicated to the incredible sponge called a Venus flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum). Little is known about this animal that has been trawled from stony bottoms at depths around 500m near the Philippines and also in the western Pacific. Its internal structure is made of siliceous spicules built up in a very fine cylindrical grid of intricate beauty. When first exhibited in Europe it was thought by some marine scientists to be a hoax, claiming that the creature was actually the product of Japanese craftsmen.
At this point in our travels we were back near the Jesuit Church with its steps leading down to the open restaurant area below. Unbeknown to us, apparently this site featured prominently in a popular TV series called “Game of Thrones”. We were also informed that some parts of “Star Wars” were filmed here too.
We were now reaching the point of being over-exposed to museums and tourist crowds so we caught the local bus back to our hotel and bought some snacks at a nearby bakery to take back to our room.
In the late afternoon a group of us wandered up the hill from our hotel and had pizzas and some of the local Dubrovnik beer. This was a pleasant way to finish a day where we’d encountered crowds that were initially quite small but had built up during the day to resemble grand final day at the MCG.
Tomorrow we have no commitments until 16:00 when we catch a high speed ferry to Hvar Island some hundred kilometres or so northwest of Dubrovnik.