Old Town

The Old Town sits on a low shelf of rock between the sea and the Srđ ridge, sealed inside a complete circuit of walls just under two kilometres around. Stradun…The Old Town sits on a low shelf of rock between the sea and the Srđ ridge, sealed inside a complete circuit of walls just under two kilometres around. Stradun, the polished limestone main street, runs dead straight between the two land gates at Pile and Ploče, with the tight grid of stepped lanes climbing away on both sides. Vehicles stop at the gates; everything inside moves on foot.

This was the capital of the Republic of Ragusa, a merchant state that ran its own affairs for over four centuries until 1808 and built almost everything still standing: the Rector's Palace, the Sponza customs house, the Franciscan monastery with its pharmacy trading since 1317, and the fountains fed by a fifteenth-century aqueduct. The 1667 earthquake levelled much of the medieval city, which is why the rebuilt core reads baroque, and the whole ensemble joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979.

For visitors the Old Town is both the sight and the base: the wall walk, the cathedral treasury and the museums by day, konobas and cocktail bars in the lanes and the Buža terraces on the seaward rocks after dark. Restaurants in the Old Town carry the city's highest prices, apartments here sell out first for summer, and the district is at its best in the two hours after sunrise, before the day visitors arrive through Pile gate.