Dubrovnik, Croatia

I woke this morning to the view below and enjoyed my cup of tea on the balcony.

The city of Dubrovnik is both ancient and alive at the same time. It even has a pharamacy that was opened in 1317 and has been in continuous use for the last 700 years to sell ancient remedies as well as modern medicines.  The people of the city are proud and pleasant; happy to share their history with visitors.

There has been a settlement along with a port for longer than there are records. When the Greeks came to create a colony during the Hellenistic Age, the Illyrians had been living here and were a challenge to control.  Like in Split, the Greeks made the mistake of requesting assistance from the Romans.  After the fall of Rome, Dubrovnik managed to remain free despite its attractive location. 

Mockingly called the "City of Seven Flags", the medieval city-state paid tribute to many powerful countries like the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Spain as well as directly to the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.  These tributes (basically, bribes) made Dubrovnik the Switzerland of the medival world.  Their more than 180 large trade ships were welcome in ports both in the east and west and made the city a place of spies and one of the only places where goods could be sold between Christians of the west and Muslims of the east.  

Their motto is, "freedom cannot be sold for all the gold in the world."  I guess they thought of the tributes as buying freedom rather than selling it, but either way, it worked!  The Dubrovnik Republic was able to maintain independence when other cities were being swallowed by empires.  It was also the first state to recognize the independence of the United States from Great Britain!

Dubrovnik was a republic, so it did not have a lord of the manor in the way that many areas of Medieval Europe functioned.  It was a port city, but it used some of the same defenses found in medieval castles.  First among them were fortified walls.  The original wall was expanded in the 16th century to protect against cannons.  The rounded and thicker walls made direct hits from cannons more difficult and limited damage to the rest of the wall.

However, Dubrovnik managed to remain free from invasions and siege throughout the Middle Ages.  It came close to being invaded once, but the network of spies were effective and the plan for conquering the city became known.  They knew that the ships would come in from the east, so they quickly began building a fort (below on the right) and finished one wall within three months. The wall was built in such a way that it appeared to the incoming ships that an entire fort had been built, so they turned around before getting close enough to be hit by possible cannons!  It took ten years to actually complete the rest of the fort.

The photo above may appear familiar. That is because the city is the location for exterior filming of Kings Landing on Game of Thrones.  

The west gate into the fortified city (below) is called Vrata od Pila.  It was built as part of the expansion in 1537.  To reach the inside, you have to cross a bridge over what used to be a moat filled from the Adriatic Sea.  Today, it has been filled in and is a park and recreation space.  

The bridge would be raised each night and all of the foreigners had to leave the city before dark and once the dawn arrived, the bridge would be lowered again and the foreigners could return to the city.  Above the entry of the gate are two protectors of the city.  The first is a statue of St. Blaise, the patron saint of the city.  And the second is a cannon....because the people had always been pragmatic and were sure to cover every contingency.