Grove Koger
My initial experience of Dubrovnik came in 1972, when my first wife and I were heading down the Adriatic coast of what was then Yugoslavia on our way to the Greek island of Corfu. Approached from the sea during the afternoon, the city can be a stunning sight, its pale ochre walls and red tile roofs glowing in the sun. But to be perfectly honest, I’m pretty sure that our ferry put into the deepwater harbor at Gruž near the northern, less picturesque side of the city. In any case, we stayed several days with a family whose house lay outside the city proper, enjoying home-cooked Croatian food and giving our amicable hosts a bottle of cherry liqueur when we departed.
Since then I’ve been lucky enough to revisit the city with Maggie twice, staying for several blissful days in 2005 in an apartment in a renovated house dating from 1780, the Family House Fascination. Among other attractions, the building offered several arbors and terraces as well as the only real garden left within the city walls. We sat outside with our glasses of pivo (beer) every evening, and as the sky faded to violet, the city’s swallows gradually gave way to its equally large population of bats.
Ten years later, in 2015, we revisited the city to research an article on Croatian art for Art Patron Magazine. During that period, the Pearl of the Adriatic, as it’s long been known, had grown into a tourist mecca, choked during the day with tens of thousands of foreigners like ourselves. But recently the New York Times reported that the current pandemic and the resulting drop in tourism have turned the city into a “quiet, almost unrecognizable” place. We’ll be watching to see how it recovers.
Dubrovnik is said to have been founded in the seventh century by Greek refugees, but evidence suggests that there had been a settlement there long before. It passed through a period of Byzantine dominance, emerged as the Republic of Ragusa, fell under the control of Venice, then of Hungary, and so on—and on. Its complicated history defies easy summary, but suffice it to say that, over many centuries, it grew into a major seafaring state.
Besides offering a myriad architectural wonders, Dubrovnik has several good (but rocky) beaches. A few minutes away lies the attractive islet of Lokrum, where Maggie and I enjoyed an alfresco lunch under the watchful eyes of hungry peacocks and swam off the island’s rocky shoreline.
The image at the top of today’s post shows Dubrovnik from the sea; the second, an arbor at the Family House Fascination. Below it you see the old port as we departed for Lokrum, followed by a shot of the islet’s rocky coast. At the bottom you see one of Lokrum’s more colorful residents.
World Enough 