Because we spent the day exploring old Dubrovnik from one end to the other, I'm going to insert a map of the old town at this point to make it easier to understand our wanderings.
Lovrijenac Fortress from top of Pile Gate |
We walked the length of the Stradun toward the Pile Gate. (At one time, there were two settlements here, one on the mainland, the other on an island. In the 13th century, the channel between them was filled and became this wide street.) At the Pile Gate we climbed the stairs to the top of the city walls, much to the boy’s delight. Running around on old city walls was always one of their favorite activities. Going clockwise, we walked and climbed all the way around the city, enjoying many fascinating and diverse views.
We approach Minceta, the largest tower | 
St. John Fortress across the harbor | 
Looking back at harbor from St. John |
The main city wall is 1.6 miles long. It’s up to 80 feet high and varies in thickness from five to 20 feet. It has 17 towers (including Minceta, the largest, on the northwest corner, and the casemate fortress Bokar on the west), five bastions (bulwarks), and a large fortress (St. John) on the south side of the harbor. The town was also defended from two independent fortresses: Revelin on the north side of the harbor side, where we had entered the city, and Lovrijenac across a channel from Bokar, near the Pile Gate.
View through an arch | 
Southern walls | 
Lovrijenac & Bokar guard Pile Gate |
It took us more than an hour to walk around the walls, but it was well worth it. We descended at the Pile Gate where we’d started. We spent some time looking around the square there, especially the Big Onofria Fountain, a very unusual domed fountain (1438). There were orange trees growing there, too. We went through the cloisters of the Franciscan Priory, where a pharmacy founded in 1319 is preserved and still functioning. The cloisters were beautiful and very restful.
Big Onofria Fountain seen from wall | 
Franciscan Priory cloister | 
Old pharmacy in Franciscan Priory |
We walked back to Luza Square and turned right, continuing past the Town Hall (19th century) to the beautiful 15th century Rector’s Palace. (The Rector was the city’s executive official, elected by the aristocracy.) It had an especially lovely courtyard (atrium) with a graceful staircase. The building is now a city museum.
Courtyard of Rector's Palace | 
Rector's Palace | 
Well in Dominican Friary cloister |
On our way back to the car, we stopped to visit the Dominican Friary with its restful 14th century cloister filled with orange trees and a pretty well. About this time, Darrell discovered that the film in his Konica camera had not been advancing since he’d last changed rolls. He fixed it in a dark doorway of the Friary church, then ran back to try to recapture some of the lost pictures. Unfortunately it was noon and the city walls were just closing for two hours, so he couldn’t go up to re-take the final couple of shots from there.
We drove back to the hotel for lunch. Afterwards, the boys went down to the beach below the hotel while Jane rested. Darrell went back to the old city to retake more of the lost pictures. By then the weather was warm and completely sunny. He went halfway around the city walls again and roamed all over the city. It was almost deserted, in contrast to the moderate crowd we’d seen in the morning, many of them young Americans seeing Europe on $2.00 a day.
Our boys at the mouth of the cave |
Darrell returned to the hotel to find Jane sunning herself on the balcony and the boys still on the beach. Although they were wearing their bathing suits, the water was still too cold for swimming. Nevertheless, they had managed to catch four starfish in the mouth of the large cave in the cliff side. Unfortunately, the starfish had shed various arms when caught and only one was intact. (Kevin eventually threw that one back into the water.) When they finally came up to the hotel, Larry had a bad chill from swimming the several yards across the mouth of the cave. By the time we finished dinner, he was all right again. The weather had turned quite cool by then.
Rector's palace by night |
After dinner, Jane and Darrell went back to see the old city at night. It was quite different than we expected. Instead of the floodlighting so common in most of Western Europe’s tourist cities, there were only small lantern-style streetlights. While the result was less spectacular than it might have been, it was much more natural. It made it easy to imagine yourself back in medieval Dubrovnik.
On returning to the hotel, we inquired about what had happened to the 1300-foot Ombla Falls we’d been unable to find. We learned that the river had been diverted into an aqueduct several years earlier, but apparently the authors of our guidebooks (Fodor and Baedeker) hadn’t been informed.
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