Dubrovnik Old City

One can see most of Dubrovnik’s significant buildings by entering the Old Town through the Pile Gate then walking along Stradun, which terminates in Luža Square, and turning right onto Prid Dvorom in order to see the Rector’s Palace and Cathedral.

Carvings of St. Blaise, Dubrovnik’s patron saint, who holds a model of the city in his hand, adorn both the Pile and Ploče Gates, historically the only two entrances to the city. Visitors were required to disinfect themselves in the adjacent fountains, which were the termini of a system delivering water from Mount Srđ, overlooking the city.

Just opposite the Large Fountain, to the right of Pile Gate, is the Renaissance St. Savior’s Church. The elaborately decorated Franciscan Monastery behind it includes (among other things) what claims to be the Europe’s oldest pharmacy, having been open continuously since 1317.

Luza Square

The sixteenth century Sponza Palace, which today houses an exhibition memorializing the city’s defenders in 1991-1992, served as its mint and custom house.

Orlando’s Column, the statue in the middle of the square, was the Republic’s focal point. The length of its right arm was used as the city’s standard measure (the Ragusan cubit), new laws were announced from atop it (as the Dubrovnik Summer Festival is today), and those who broke them found themselves punished on the same spot.

Behind the column is the gaudy Baroque church dedicated to St. Blaise, who owes his role as the city’s patron to his alleged appearance in a vision warning a local priest of a Venetian attack in 791.

The city’s political nerve-center lay nearby in the Rector’s Palace, a colonnaded hulk housing state offices, a powder store, and (appropriately) a prison.

It takes its name from the city’s nominal ruler, a noble elected monthly by his peers who then could not be reelected for another two years.

He was effectively imprisoned here for his entire term, emerging only (with the permission of the rest of the nobility) for state ceremonies.

This bizarre arrangement served its purpose of keeping this oligarchy from becoming a dictatorship and opulence of the reliquary in the Baroque Cathedral testifies to the economic success of this system and the city that spawned it.