Dubrovnik

3:14 June 25
Dubrovnik, Croatia

For the sake of convenience, I am going to abandon chronology here. I have a lot to say and show about Lebanon, but I'm going to jump into what's going on now in Croatia, and pepper in posts about Lebanon from time to time.

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I didn't sleep my last night in Beirut, going to the hip district of Gemmayzeh and climbing the Holiday Inn (more on this later) for incredible views, before heading to the airport at 4am for a 6 o'clock flight. After connecting through Istanbul and Zagreb, I arrived in Dubrovnik around 4pm.

I am living in a dorm at the Center for Advanced Academic Studies in Dubrovnik, a branch of the University of Zabreb. It's in a great old building, built in 1901, with a large open courtyard in the middle. The dorm is nicer than my room at school, complete with a small kitchen (and cooking implements!), bathroom, and staircase to lofted bedroom. My roommate is named George, an Arab from Florida. We seem to have a lot in common. Classes are in the same building, one floor down. It's a very nice setup. The institute it a five minute walk down to the Pile Gate, the main entrance into the old city.





















Dubrovnik was founded in the 6th century, and rose to a position of power and influence in the Mediterranean as a major trading center. Then known as Ragusa, the city was built on a rocky promontory, separated from land by a lagoon, which was eventually turned into the city's main street: the Stradun.


Along the Adriatic coast, storms usually approach from the north-east, and the promontory's natural open port is ideally located on its southern edge. Additionally, the peanut shaped island of Lokrum just off the coast, shelters this port from any storm that comes from the south. The location was ideally suited for the city state to transform itself into the commercial powerhouse that it would become.
















Monolithic fortifications were built around the two sides of the city surrounded by land, and thanks to an impressive system of 8 km of aqueducts and sluices that piped fresh water from the hills above into the city's fountains, the city withstood innumerable attacks throughout its history. In 866, it survived a 15-month siege by invading Arab tribes.

The water system still functions. Onofrio's fountain (named after the Neopolitan architect who designed it in 1444) occupies a prominent place at the beginning of the Stradun, just inside the city walls. The fountain's water is still drinkable. Indeed, it tastes better than the bottled water you buy in the market here. I fill up my water bottle here on the way back from the city now.



























In the long history of this part of the Balkans (the coast here is known as Dalmatia) changing hands between different empires and principalities, Dubrovnik was always the exception. My Balkan History textbook repeatedly states "The area was then brought under the dominion of the Ottomans/Venetians/Austrians/etc, with the exception of Ragusa."

By 1200 it had achieved its own identity as an autonomous city-state, free of Byzantium. Ragusa was a republic, in which an oligarchy of 500 moneyed families passed around control of the city's institutions for more than half a millennia. The patrician class was not land-owning, since there was little cultivatable land close by. Instead, they occupied the role of cultured, cosmopolitan shippers and merchants, who shared a collaborative interest with the common citizen, in the development of the city's infrastructure for the trading and transportation of trade goods.

So afraid were they of a usurpation of the city's traditional republic institutions that the chief executive, the rector, could serve for only one month, and during that month was now allowed to leave the Rector's Palace (the columned building on the right in the picture below).














By 1426 the republic extended 45 miles up the coast, with a population of 25,000 in total (5,000 in the actual city). The government was both abnormally involved in the minutiae of city management, and highly efficient. The city's archives are the most complete of any medieval European city, and remain a valuable resource for scholars of the period. In 1272 the city's statute had already incorporated 45 sections for regulating and guiding urban development.

In 1667 a severe earthquake destroyed many of the buildings inside the city's walls, so most of the city today dates from the decades of rebuilding that occurred in the Venetian baroque style of the late 17th century. The city's autonomy ended when it surrendered to Napoleon in 1808, and became part of his "Illyrian Provinces" and then, after his defeat, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During the wars of Yugoslav succession, Serbian nationalist forces shelled the city for 11 months in 1991-2. Many of the orange-tile roofs were knocked off, though the Serbs were careful not to destroy the buildings, because they were aware of Dubrovnik's enormous value as a lucrative tourist destination, and they never entered the city.














Dubrovnik is one of the most picturesque cities I have ever seen. Unfortunately, this means that it has become somewhat of a tourist trap. During the days, thousands of tour groups unload, from bus and cruise ship, and clog the city's arteries. The narrow alley-ways of the old town are full of cheap tourist kitsch and overpriced pasta and seafood restaurants. All these visitors bring a great deal of money to the area, though one can't help but wish that Dubrovnik was not as overexposed. Still, it earns its nickname of "Pearl of the Adriatic."

PS. Click on any picture for a higher resolution version.