Dubrovnik in Croatia

Dubrovnik in Croatia has the finest set of city walls anywhere in the world. They’re an essential visit for any traveller or tourist to this most beautiful of old cities, which for five centuries was a major power in the Mediterranean. Since my previous visit, two interesting changes had been made regarding the walls. The first was visitors now had to pay for the privilege of walking around the ramparts and the second was a one-way system was in operation, so people could only walk in an anti-clockwise direction. Visitors have two entrances to choose from, by the Pile Gate and by the Ploce Gate near the harbour, and most people seem to walk from the latter to the former, in other words on the land side - with the amount of tourists in town on occasions, from up to six cruise ships, it just might be the quickest way to get across Dubrovnik. The walls are roughly 2 kilometres long and 25 metres high at their highest point.

The views on the land side are of terracotta-coloured rooves and the narrow streets heading down to the main street called Stradun on one side and the lower slopes of Mount Srd on the other. Past the Pile Gate the views are firstly of the new town and the Lovrijenac Fortress to the west and then as you head eastwards there are the houses of Dubrovnik once again on one side and the waters of the Adriatic Sea on the other, with the waves battering incessantly against the rocks far below.

Dubrovnik’s cable-car runs from the north of the city walls to the top of Mount Srd in just under four minutes. The top of the mountain is 405 metres above the city and the views from the cable-car station are stupendous, although the best views are from the roof of the Napoleonic Fort, which houses the Homeland War Museum, to the west of the cable-car station. Here the visitor can see Dubrovnik and the coastline without the paraphernalia from the cable-car system getting in the way. The museum is worth devoting time to as the exhibits clearly show the Serbs, on nearby Mount Zarkovica, targeting the old town of Dubrovnik with fly-by-wire missiles, artillery shells, and machine-gun fire. Naval vessels also shelled Dubrovnik. 56% of the buildings in the old town were damaged and 116 people died. This was an undefended city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the only people firing back at the Serbs were the Croatian army on Mount Srd.

In Dubrovnik there is also a marvellous War Photo photographic exhibition on the alley called Antuninska on the land side of Stradun. War Photo opens to coincide with the main tourism season from June to September and has pictures from the Balkans War as well as images from the various civil wars in Africa. Some of the photos from the Srebrenica Exhibition in Sarajevo were here and copies could be bought. I really liked the images at War Photo, largely because there was a short story to accompany most of the images, helping set the context for the taking of the photograph. There were some astonishing facts such as: in 2013 a grenade could be bought in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, for the sum of 30 Eurocents. In the Balkans War, a village called Lukomir on Mt Bjelasnica, only a few kilometres from Sarajevo, was completely untouched by the war because of its remoteness.

There’s a lovely place for a drink called Buza on the seaward side of Dubrovnik. The view from Buza is out over the Adriatic with yachts passing serenely by and kayakers battling against the waves. Buza can be found by heading from Luza Square towards the Cathedral and then keep going past the Cathedral until the city walls intervene. Turn right at this point to find Buza. If you see signs for Buza II, then you have gone too far. This area of the old town is worth spending some time in as the crowds are few and the old buildings can be contemplated in relative peace. There are some restaurants and cafes here, which are a lot quieter than their counterparts perhaps two hundred yards away near a major tourist sight.