What a difference does it make to wake up to a dry, partially sunny day! I am excited to explore Dubrovnik, although I have to readjust my thinking about how I am going to do this. The first consideration will have to go toward the steep slopes over which the city has sprawled. Everybody here must have a great view of the Adriatic, because everyone is perched well above the adjacent property! You have to be a mountaineer to take a stroll through the town. And then again the coast has deep embayments, so it is not easy to go from one part of town to the other. Aha! Enter the local bus. The best deal is to go back to the Central Bus Station, and buy a local bus pass for 5 euros and 31 cents (Really? Why not just 5 euros, or 5.50 euros?) for 24 hours, and then you can ride the local bus network at your heart's content.
Now that I have wheels, the first order of business given that I have a nice day ahead of me is to visit the Old City. There is a lot of history and geomorphology packed in here, so let me think what is the best way to start ... Let me start with the geology. The old Yugoslavia was the poster child of karstic geology, or the many weird landforms that develop when you have dense limestones (caves, underground rivers, sink holes, and elongated peninsulas and islands formed by prominent "ribs" of limestone). One such peninsula was present at the site of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik), and the Serene Republic of Venice decided to take it for itself to form the hub of its Dalmatian coast trade in Medieval times. It was perfect; the triangle made by Ragusa on the eastern Adriatic, Ancona in the western Adriatic, and the Mediterranean from Alexandria to Gibraltar was a neat conveyor belt for all sorts of merchandise. But then the powers of Hungary and Bohemia fought for the prize, and in the 1300's Venice was defeated (temporarily) and Ragusa was transformed into the not-so-serene Republic of Dubrovnik, which with its central city, and the Croatian Islands, became an important trading power that persisted from the 14th to the 19th centuries (good old Napoleon caused the end of the Dubrovnik Republic in 1808, and after his defeat Austria/Bohemia took over and completely messed things up).
How did I drift from geology to history? Well, the limestone peninsula happened to have two important things: An inexhaustible source of building stone (so all buildings in Dubrovnik harmonize with each other) and an impregnable cliff to protect the harbor. From its modest beginnings as a Byzantine port in the early Middle Ages, to its apogee as Ragusa in the 13th century, to its Golden Age as Dubrovnik, the sheltered embayment grew into an impregnable walled city of amazing beauty. It is one of the most beautiful Medieval cities in Europe!
I started my visit with a tour of the walls, second only to the Great Wall of China. First, buy the Old City Pass for 15 euros, with which you can also visit all the museums inside the Old City, and then take your first steep stairs to the left as you enter the city. After that you will be able to go around the city, admiring the amazing views of a medieval metropolis to your left and the Adriatic to your right. A highlight is a visit to the Maritime Museum, located in one of the corner bastions. At some point, however, you need to get down into the maze of the town, where amazingly high tenements crowd around amazingly narrow alleys, which at some time must have harbored all sorts of merchants and traders (nothing that might look like warehouses, however, so those were probably located outside of the city walls). Quite a few churches and towers, but I am not sure what was the point of monumental sacred architecture wedged in spaces so tight that they can hardly be appreciated (but then again, folks at that time did not look at their monuments through the view finder of a cell phone).
After walking around the Old City, and having visited the Maritime, Ethnography, City, and Archaeologic museums I was done. It was still mid afternoon, so I used my bus pass to the max by taking the bus to the far ends of the town. It is a beautiful town, and as I said before I am sure each of those flats have great views of the sea, but I would hate to have to haul grocery bags up 50 to 100 flights of steps!
No comments:
Post a Comment