Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik also known as ‘The Pearl of the Adriatic’ was without a doubt, my favourite destination in Europe. Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said something which sums the city up perfectly. ‘Those who wish to seek paradise on Earth, come see Dubrovnik’.

A magnificent curtain of walls surrounds marble streets and ornamental buildings that exude a pearly light in the Adriatic sun. From the clock towers to the churches, from the Renaissance buildings to the Baroque, Dubrovnik was even more beautiful than I imagined it to be, all reminiscent of an eventful history. Beyond the city is a heavenly landscape of beaches, peninsulas and a sea strewn with untouched islands.

After a long day on the bus we were all keen to experience Dubrovnik at night. Hidden down one of the marbled streets of the Old Town, we found a little bar that served buckets to start off the night. After a few too many buckets we made our way to the sophisticated Skybar for cocktails and finally onto the legendary EastWest Club. The club is set on the beachfront and turns from beach bar with umbrellas and beach chairs by day to a night club by night. Here we consumed even more alcohol and danced the night away.

Our first day in Dubrovnik and it was off to explore the remarkable city walls. After a big night and in the hot sun, it was quite an effort to walk the walls, but it was definitely worth it. Built between the 13th and 16th centuries and still intact today, these powerful walls are the finest in the world and Dubrovnik's main claim to fame. The walls were built to protect the city from invasion both land and sea. The Old Town is contained within a curtain of stone over 2km long and up to 25m high. The walls are anywhere between 1.5m and 6m thick, which at times make them quite narrow to walk through. Overlooking the South Dalmatia Coast and Adriatic Ocean, the views from the walls are absolutely breathtaking. From the highest point, you can see across the vastness of orange rooftops, some old and some new. One is a sign of the town’s prosperity, the other of survival. If you look carefully, you can also see bullet holes in the walls, a clear reminder of the city’s turbulent past.

After lunch, we navigated our way through the old-town streets in search of the famous Cliff Bar. Entering through a hole in a wall, we emerged down stairs to a platform of chairs and tables and umbrellas on the cliff edge, spectacularly overlooking the sea below. As the name suggests, it’s a great place to watch the courageous cliff jump from a height of at least 10 metres. Stories of those that had died from jumping put me off attempting it myself, but it didn’t get much better than sitting on the edge, beer in hand, admiring the views as the sun set.

Like so many other places in Europe, it was the history of Dubrovnik that captivated me. This gorgeous walled city at one stage found itself under siege for seven months during the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s. The physical scars can still be seen on some buildings, but many people have laboured long and hard to restore the city to its former glory.

Dubrovnik is known as the city of 7 flags, named after the fact that 7 nations have all tried to conquer Dubrovnik, with none succeeding. Between the 14th century and 1808, Dubrovnik ruled itself as a free state. Dubrovnik was then ruled under the Hasburg (Austria) Empire until 1918, when Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia became part of Yogoslavia. During World War II, Dubrovnik became part of the Nazi controlled Independent State of Croatia, occupied by the Italian army first, and by the German army after 8 September 1943. In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, resulting in the seize of Dubrovnik. Following Croatia's independence in 1991, Serbian-Montenegrin remains of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) attacked the city. The JNA invaded the Dubrovnik area in October 1991 from Montenegro, Bosnia and even parts of Croatia, surrounding the city in order to conquer it. The three-month bombardment of the port city was one of the events which turned international opinion against the Serbs and is the cause for many of the disputes between the Croats and Serbs that we still see today.

Dubrovnik was besieged and attacked in October 1991, with the major fighting ending in early 1992 and the Croatian counterattack finally lifting the siege and liberating the area in mid-1992. During the siege, Dubrovnik was attacked from above the city at the top of Mt Str. Standing at the gate of the Old Town, looking up towards the top of the mountain, it dawns on me that the Serbs had the perfect position in which to attack from. Although the city walls provided great protection, it wasn’t enough to help prevent more than 300 deaths over seven months. Although a heavy loss, I do still believe that the citizens of Dubrovnik did extremely well to withstand the attacks and limit the death toll to 300. The heaviest shelling of the city was on St. Nicholas Day, on December 6, 1991, when thirteen civilians were killed, which represented the greatest number of civilian deaths on a single day during the siege. The siege caused at least 15,000 refugees, of which 7,000 were evacuated by sea in October 1991, whereas the city itself was without electricity or fresh water for at least two months, until the end of December 1991. The population at that time was dependent on ships for their water supply.

Walking down the Stradum of The Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s hard to believe what had occurred in the city just 20 years earlier. In the aftermath of the siege, the city has rebuilt and and it is no wonder that it now stands as undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities anywhere in the world.