City Walls, Maritime & Dominican Museums of Dubrovnik

This morning here in Dubrovnik, I walked along the old city walls and visited the Maritime Museum and the Dominican Monastery Museum. But before I get into that, a housekeeping note.

I’m going to try something different in this journal for today and maybe for the future. Rather than one excruciatingly long post, I’ll publish two boringly long posts. The first entry will cover everything I do up to and including lunch. And the second will cover the post-lunch period.

It’s next to impossible to place images cleanly into a post—shrinking them first so they load faster and don’t take up too much space on the server—from my phone. I need my computer for that. (It’s easy on my MacBook. I have a folder on my computer desktop with an Automator process attached to it. If I drag and drop images from Photos into that folder it automatically processes the image the way I want it.) So I likely won’t publish the first of the day’s entries until I go back to my hotel before dinner. And I’ll publish the afternoon post after dinner.

I don’t know if I’ll do this every day from now on. I’ll see how it goes today. And there will probably be times when the day’s activities will make it impractical to split them into two posts. Tomorrow might be such a day.

Enough about that. I fear this is already becoming boringly long. I don’t want to venture into excruciatingly long territory.

City Walls

The number one attraction in Dubrovnik is probably the walk along the top of the old city walls. The walls completely encircle the old town in a continuous loop.

The city knows how popular the city walls are. And it’s not shy about exploiting their value. Admission to the top of city walls costs €35. That allows only one entry. You can’t leave and come back again.

You can also buy a “Dubrovnik Pass” online. (I don’t know if you can buy it any other way. It includes free entry to the city walls and many other attractions. Plus, it provides discounted entry to still other attractions.

You can visit each attraction only once with the pass. So it’s like the city walls entry ticket in that regard.

You can buy a one-, three- or seven-day Dubrovnik Pass. Here’s the thing. A one-day Dubrovnik Pass costs €35, the same as the City Walls ticket. Therefore, the only reason to buy the ticket rather than the pass, which includes a lot more, is if you don’t know about the pass or you’re a technophobe who can’t or won’t buy stuff online.

I bought the seven-day pass. That’s longer than I’ll be here. But the three-day pass is shorter than I’ll be here. And the price difference between three and seven days is small enough that it seems worthwhile.

Oh, yeah. The Walls

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The city walls.

The keepers of the city walls today insist that everyone walk along them in the same direction. No counterflow walking and no backtracking. I don’t know why they insist on walking the walls only in one direction. No section is too narrow for two people to walk abreast. And most sections aren’t particularly cramped if two do walk side-by-side or cross paths. Some sections could easily accommodate more than that.

There are three entrances to the walk on top of the walls. But because the city-walls ticket and the Dubrovnik pass both allow only a single entry, if you want to walk the full length of the walls you have to do it in one go, entering and exiting at the same place. (You can walk around more than a full circuit, leaving at a different exit than the entrance you used, as long as you do it with a single entry.) Otherwise, if you want to do the full circuit, you’d have to pay another €35 to come back.

Leisurely walking the full length of the walls, stopping occasionally to take in the views, takes at least an hour. You could power walk through it faster, without any stops, in maybe half an hour or less. But why would you want to? There are plenty of places where you can power walk for free. Take the time to enjoy the views, why don’t you? You paid for it.

Speaking of the views, they’re spectacular. Because the walls rise above the old town, I got to look down on the streets, the buildings, and the buildings’ tile roofs of the old town. And some portions of the walk provide views of an old fortress, the sea, the old port, parts of the newer city, and the mountain behind Dubrovnik on the other side of the wall.

I very much enjoyed the walk.

Maritime Museum

The entrance to the Maritime Museum of Dubrovnik is on the walk along the top of the city walls. I don’t think there’s any way to get into the museum without buying admission to the city walls walk.

Admission to the Maritime Museum is not included with the city walls ticket. But it is included with the Dubrovnik Pass. Bonus!

Considering that it was essentially free for me, I couldn’t possibly not go in.

It’s a small museum on two levels. Exhibits include models of old ships, mechanisms from old ships, paintings of ships and maritime personages, artifacts from underwater archaeological sites, and information on Dubrovnik’s Maritime past.

It’s not an earth-shattering museum, but if you have a Dubrovnik Pass it’s certainly more than worth the incremental cost, namely zero. Besides, why would you want to contribute to the success of something as cataclysmic as a museum that shatters Earth? The Maritime Museum won’t do that. So, it has that going for it.

Dominican Monastery Museum

Dubrovnik has not one, but two monastery museums. I visited the Franciscan Monastery Museum yesterday. Today it was the Dominican Monastery Museum’s turn.

Like at the Franciscan Monastery, the museum is beside a cloister. The cloister surrounds a small courtyard. A wide, raised strip of grass and trees—including palm trees and one flowering tree, among others—runs along three sides of the courtyard.

The museum at the Dominican Monastery is in two rooms. In addition to religious artifacts, it contains a small number of paintings with religious themes. Most are from the “Dubrovnik School” circa 1500. But the prized possession is a Titian painting.

Those religious artifacts? As in the Franciscan Monastery, they include some reliquaries shaped like arms and legs. What? Is that a fetish here?

Lunch

That’s it for this morning.

Oh, in case you’re interested. I had a lunch of squid, wine, and an espresso at a nice restaurant with a terrace that overlooks the old port through large stone arches under the city walls.

I spent an unhurried hour and a half over lunch, including typing most of these words on my phone. Italy is close. I guess La Dolce Vita can transit the Adriatic Sea.

If you read this shortly after I published it, stay tuned for the post about this afternoon. If you read it later, lucky you. You can go on to read the afternoon post right away by clicking/tapping the forward button that should appear somewhere on this page when that post is already available. (Or, you can just click here because I came back and included a link to that post about the Rector’s Palace, Ethnographic Museum and synagogue that I visited this afternoon.)

Please let me know in the comments below this post, or below the afternoon post, if you prefer two posts a day or one. I’m still going to do whatever is most convenient for me. But if it turns out that I’m indifferent between one and two posts I might consider your preference. That’s just the sort of responsive, caring kind of guy I am.