Dubrovnik: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
For four hundred and fifty years this was the Republic of Ragusa, an independent state the size of a large farm, which survived between Venice, the Ottomans and Austria by paying all three and fighting none of them. It abolished slavery in 1416, invented the quarantine, and carved its motto over the gate of its fort: liberty is not well sold for all the gold in the world. Napoleon ended it in 1808 with a single order. Two hours, and the stone is slippery when wet.
A short history of Dubrovnik
In the 7th century the inhabitants of the Roman town of Epidaurum fled here from the Slavs and the Avars and founded a settlement on a rock facing the shore. From it grew the Republic of Ragusa, an independent merchant state that lived mainly from shipping and diplomacy. In 1416 the republic banned the slave trade, one of the first places in Europe to do so. The earthquake of 1667 destroyed most of the city and killed thousands of its inhabitants. In 1808 Napoleon abolished the republic after centuries of independence. On Žudioska Street a medieval synagogue is still in use, one of the oldest in Europe still used for prayer. In 1979 the old town was declared a World Heritage Site, and between 1991 and 1992 it was besieged and shelled by the Yugoslav army.
The ten best sights in Dubrovnik
1City Walls35 euros, 1,940 metres, and go at eight or after five
2Minčeta TowerOn the walls ticket, the highest point, and the queue forms at ten
3Fort LovrijenacOn the walls ticket, 37 metres above the sea, and liberty is carved over the door
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4Bokar Fortress
On the walls ticket, and it guards the ditch under Pile
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5Revelin Fortress
5 euros, built in eleven years flat, and a nightclub is in the cellar
6Rector’s Palace15 euros, and the rector served one month and could not leave it
7Sponza PalaceFree, it survived the 1667 earthquake, and the war memorial is inside
8Dubrovnik CathedralFree, and the treasury with the saint’s relics is 5 euros
9St Blaise ChurchFree, and the saint holds a model of the city as it was before 1667
10Orlando ColumnFree, from 1418, and his forearm was the city’s official measure
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Dubrovnik →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Dubrovnik:
Free walking tours in Dubrovnik
A republic that bought its freedom
For four hundred and fifty years this was the Republic of Ragusa, an independent state the size of a large farm, which survived between Venice, the Ottomans and Austria by paying all three and fighting none of them. It abolished slavery in 1416, invented the quarantine, and carved its motto over the gate of its fort: liberty is not well sold for all the gold in the world. Napoleon ended it in 1808 with a single order. Two hours, and the stone is slippery when wet.
- Pile Gate · There is an outer gate and an inner gate with a bent passage between them, because a straight run would let attackers charge through. The wooden drawbridge was raised every evening at sunset and the keys handed to the rector, who kept them in the palace overnight — the ceremony ran without a break until 1808.
- Onofrio Fountain · An engineer from Naples built an aqueduct twelve kilometres from a spring at Šumet in 1438 so the city could survive a siege without river water, and this is where it arrives. Sixteen carved faces spout into the basin, and the water is still drinkable — the aqueduct has never stopped working.
- Stradun · This was a sea channel separating a Roman island from the Slav settlement on the shore, and it was filled in during the twelfth century to join them. After the earthquake of 1667 the street was rebuilt to one plan — every house the same height, the same windows, and the same arched shop door with the serving counter in it.
- Sponza Palace · The customs house and the mint, finished in 1522 and one of the very few buildings that came through the 1667 earthquake standing. Carved in the inner courtyard is the warning to the officials who weighed goods there: the weights I use are not mine, and when I weigh goods God weighs me.
- Orlando Column · Put up in 1418 as the symbol of the city’s freedom — the flag of the Republic flew from it and decrees were read beneath it. His right forearm was also the official unit of length of Ragusa, fifty-one point two centimetres, and the measure is still cut into the base for anyone who wants to check a length of cloth.
- Rector’s Palace · The rector of Ragusa was elected for one month at a time, could not be re-elected for two years, and during his month he was not allowed to leave this building except on official business. Over the door is the instruction he read every morning: forget private affairs, attend to public ones.
The wall, the quarantine and the plague
Ragusa lived on trade, and trade carried plague. In 1377 its Great Council passed a law that no one had passed anywhere before: arrivals from infected places must wait thirty days on a designated island before entering the city. Thirty became forty, quaranta, and the word quarantine comes from this council chamber. The walls were built with the same instinct — keep the danger outside and count the days. Two and a half hours, and the walls circuit is one way only.
- City Walls · One thousand nine hundred and forty metres right round, up to six metres thick on the landward side and as little as one and a half on the sea side, because the sea itself was the defence there. They were never breached by an army in all the centuries they stood — the Republic bought its way out of every siege instead.
- Minčeta Tower · The highest point of the defences, begun as a square tower in 1319 and rebuilt round after Constantinople fell in 1453 and the city understood what cannon could now do. Michelozzo of Florence designed the new one and Juraj Dalmatinac finished it in 1464 — round walls deflect a cannonball, square ones take it.
- Fort Lovrijenac · The story is that Venice sent ships with stone to build a fort on this rock, and Ragusa threw one up in three months so the Venetians arrived to find it taken. Over the entrance is the sentence the Republic lived by: non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro — liberty is not well sold for all the gold in the world.
- Maritime Museum · At its height Ragusa had around a hundred and eighty ocean-going ships and the third largest merchant fleet in the Mediterranean, run from a city of about seven thousand people. The museum is in St John’s Fortress, which guarded the harbour mouth with a chain that was stretched across it at night.
- Porporela · The breakwater built out from St John’s Fortress in 1873, and it is where the city itself swims. Not a beach, no sand and no bar — iron ladders set into the stone, and at seven in the morning the same dozen people are there every day of the year, including January.
- Rupe Museum · Fifteen dry pits cut straight down into the bedrock, each holding about a hundred and fifty tonnes of grain, and the whole thing was the Republic’s insurance against siege and famine. The rock keeps the grain at a steady temperature, and it was reckoned to feed the city for a year.
Seven months of shelling
From October 1991 to May 1992 Dubrovnik was besieged and shelled: the water and power were cut, two thirds of the buildings inside the walls were hit, and the shells were falling on a UNESCO world heritage site in front of the world’s cameras. The defenders held the Napoleonic fort on the hill above with almost nothing. Walking this is walking a war that happened in a town that looks like it has never had one. Three hours, and the cable car does the hill.
- Cable Car · It opened in 1969, was destroyed in the first days of the siege in 1991 and the cables cut, and lay as wreckage for nineteen years before being rebuilt in 2010. The ride is four minutes and climbs to four hundred and five metres, and from the top the whole walled town is the size of a hand.
- Homeland War Museum · The fort on top of Srđ was built by Napoleon’s army in 1806 and bears his initial over the door. In 1991 about thirty Croatian defenders held it against a far larger force for the whole siege, because if the hill fell the town below was finished — the museum is inside it and the shell holes are left as they are.
- Revelin Fortress · When Venice and the Ottomans both looked threatening in 1538 the Senate ordered every other building project in the Republic stopped so that this one fort could be finished, and it took eleven years. During the siege of 1991 its cellars were the air-raid shelter for the old town, and today they are a nightclub.
- Ploče Gate · The eastern entrance, reached over a stone bridge and then a wooden drawbridge, and the caravans from the Balkan interior came in here — this is the gate that faced the Ottoman empire. The quarantine buildings where arriving merchants waited out their forty days stand just outside it.
- Synagogue · On the second floor of a house in a narrow lane, in use since 1352, and the second oldest synagogue still standing in Europe. The community here was never large and is now about twenty people; the furnishings on display were hidden in private houses through the Second World War and brought back afterwards.
- Buža · Buža means hole, and that is literally what it is — somebody knocked a doorway through the south sea wall and put tables on the rocks outside. There is no kitchen, the drinks come in plastic, and people jump from the rock into twenty metres of water with the wall above them.
Getting to Dubrovnik and getting around
- Dubrovnik Airport · At Ćilipi, 20 kilometres south, and the shuttle is 10 euros
- Gruž Bus Station · Buses to Split, Mostar and Kotor, and bus 1A to the Pile Gate
- Gruž Harbour · Every ferry and every cruise ship, and the island boats go from here
- Pile Gate · The main gate and the bus terminus, and no cars go past it
Cheap eats in Dubrovnik
Eight counters, and the honest warning first: inside the walls almost nothing is cheap, because the rent on a lane two metres wide is what it is. The dishes worth finding are the ones the coast actually eats — black risotto made with cuttlefish ink, octopus salad, and oysters from Mali Ston up the road, which have been farmed in the same bay since Roman times. A plate inside the walls is 15 to 25 euros; the same thing in Gruž or Lapad is half.
- Gruž Market · Mornings only, and the fish hall shuts at one
- Gundulić Square Market · Till noon, closed Sunday, and cash only
- Kopun · About 25 euros a main, on a quiet square, and book
- Barba · Octopus burger and fish to take away, about 10 euros
- Taj Mahal · Bosnian, not Indian, and the ćevapi are about 14 euros
- Pantarul · In Lapad, where the locals eat, and about 20 euros a main
- Azur · Dalmatian cooking with Asian spice, and about 18 euros
- Cogito Coffee · By Ploče, a proper roaster, and about 3 euros
Museums in Dubrovnik
- Rector’s Palace · 15 euros, and the ticket covers four museums
- Maritime Museum · 10 euros, in St John’s Fortress, and the ship models are the thing
- Rupe Museum · 8 euros, and it is the coolest building in August
- Homeland War Museum · 7 euros, in Napoleon’s fort on Srđ, and it was the front line
- Museum of Modern Art · 10 euros, a 1930s villa above the sea, and three terraces
- Dulčić Masle Pulitika Gallery · In the Rector’s Palace ticket, three friends who painted this coast
- Synagogue · 5 euros, from 1352, and a small museum on the floor below
- Dubrovnik Cathedral treasury · 5 euros for the treasury, and the cathedral itself is free
Nature and day trips near Dubrovnik
The walled town is eight hundred metres end to end and there is almost no shade in it. Everything green is outside — an island fifteen minutes by boat, a hill with a cable car, an arboretum five hundred years old, and thirteen islands in a chain going north-west.
- Lokrum Island · 27 euros with the boat, 15 minutes out, and peacocks everywhere
- Mount Srđ · 412 metres, an hour on foot up a zigzag, and no shade at all
- Trsteno Arboretum · 10 euros, 30 minutes north, and bus 12 or 15 stops there
- Lopud · An hour by ferry, no cars on the island, and Šunj is a sand beach
- Koločep · Thirty minutes by ferry, 160 residents, and two villages joined by a path
- Mljet National Park · From 15 euros, two hours by ferry, and bikes are rented at the gate
- Ston · An hour north, 5.5 kilometres of wall, and oysters from the bay
- Pelješac · The wine peninsula, and the Dingač slope is 45 degrees
Things to do in Dubrovnik with kids
- Cable Car · 27 euros return, four minutes, and the glass floor at the top
- Lokrum Island · 27 euros with the boat, and bring everything with you
- Copacabana Beach · Free, on Babin Kuk, and the water slides are the reason
- Lapad Bay · Free, shallow and sheltered, and bus 6 goes from Pile
- City Walls · 35 euros, 90 minutes, and children under seven are free
- Maritime Museum · 10 euros, ship models and a real cannon deck, and not big
- Banje Beach · Free at the edges, pebbles, and kayaks are rented there
- Rupe Museum · 8 euros, fifteen pits under a glass floor, and cool inside
Nightlife in Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is not a late city. The old town empties when the cruise passengers go back, the serious drinking happens in two or three places, and the rest of it is a bar on a rock with the sun going down. The one real club is in the cellar of a sixteenth-century fortress.
- Buža · A beer is about 7 euros, cash only, and shuts when dark
- Revelin Fortress · The one real club, in the cellars, and it starts at midnight
- Gradska kavana · The town café since 1865, and the back terrace looks at the harbour
- Café Festival · On Stradun by the fountain, and the best seat for watching the street
- Banje Beach · The beach club runs till two in summer, and the walls are lit
- Lapad Promenade · Where the locals go out, and the prices are half the old town
- Porporela · Free, the mole at night with the town lit behind you
- Fort Lovrijenac · Hamlet is staged on the roof every summer, and has been since 1952
Holy places in Dubrovnik
- St Blaise Church · Free, on Luža square, and the facade is 1715
- Dubrovnik Cathedral · Free, and the treasury with the relics is 5 euros more
- Synagogue · 5 euros, in use since 1352, and on the second floor of a house
- Rector’s Palace chapel · In the palace ticket, and the inscription over the door is the point
- Lokrum monastery · Free with the island, Benedictine, abandoned in 1808
- Mljet island monastery · In the park ticket, on an island inside a lake inside an island
- Cavtat · Free, 40 minutes by boat, and the mausoleum is 3 euros
- Ston · An hour north, and the walls were built to guard the salt
Frequently asked questions about Dubrovnik
What is there to see in Dubrovnik?
The top sights in Dubrovnik are City Walls, Minčeta Tower and Fort Lovrijenac. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Dubrovnik?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Dubrovnik without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Dubrovnik?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Dubrovnik, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A republic that bought its freedom.
How do you get to Dubrovnik and get around?
The main ways are Dubrovnik Airport, Gruž Bus Station and Gruž Harbour. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Dubrovnik, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Dubrovnik that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Dubrovnik for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.