Museum x 2, Church x 3, and an Aquarium

This afternoon, after a morning on Mount Srd, I visited a couple of museums, three churches, and an aquarium. That sounds busier than it was, mainly because I only ducked into the churches, the aquarium doesn’t offer much and the second museum, while much more interesting than the first, didn’t take as much time.

The Foundry Museum

What is now the foundry museum has somewhat of a mortifying past. Its origins were respectable enough in a “war happens” sort of way. It was established in 1545 as a medieval foundry. My understanding is that’s a tad late for a medieval anything, but who am I to quibble? The foundry made cannonballs and gunpowder.

A major earthquake damaged it in 1667. Then it was buried under a garbage dump. After that, it was buried under a playground. Wait? What happened to the garbage dump? Did the kids play in a playground built on top of a dump? I don’t know, but that just sounds just plain wrong. Did they hate their kids?

I got the above information from a guidebook, not from the museum. Signage and information in any form are almost non-existent at the museum.

And it’s the most confusing museum I’ve ever been in.

The entrance is in a tower beside the old city walls. From the main street of the old town, you have to climb several flights of stairs to get there. The entrance to the tower is up another longish flight of stairs from the adjacent street.

No sign at the street level marks the museum. A small, sign that doesn’t clearly say it’s the Foundry Museum is on the door at the top of the stairs from the street.

Entry to the museum is free with the Dubrovnik pass, which I had. So I didn’t have to pay anything to get in.

Once inside, the ticket-taker scanned my Dubrovnik Pass and unlocked a door to let me into the museum itself.

He said, “Go down the stairs to the exhibits, then go all the way down the rest of the stairs and my colleague will be there to let you out.”

He then took me to the first level down and left me there.

That level consisted of an unadorned curved stone corridor with some alcoves off it. There was no signage to tell me what it was. I walked down another level, which was identical to the first.

Walking down another level took me to a room with a small display of pottery fragments.

Walking down another level took me to a room with a small display of stone crucible fragments.

Finally, walking down another level or two (I forget if it was one or two) took me to where they had excavated the old foundry. I walked around a catwalk over the excavations. At different points, signs provided a single phrase, not even a whole sentence, on what activity happened in that area of the foundry.

Done looking at the foundry in what I thought was the lower level, I couldn’t find the ticket-taker’s colleague. Nor could I find any door leading anywhere other than where I came in. And I was the only visitor down there so I couldn’t follow someone else hoping they knew where they were going.

I then saw a set of stairs down. Ah, ha! I wasn’t at the lower level. I walked down the stairs. All that was down there was a set of washrooms. No door leading anywhere else. No staff.

I walked back up to the excavation level and found a door to the outside. That led to a small courtyard and behind it some more flights of stairs down. At the bottom of those stairs, a set of heavy chains blocked the way down another small set of stairs. And still, there was no sign of the ticket-taker’s colleague anywhere.

Looking over a parapet showed me where those blocked-off stairs went. They ended at a heavy metal gate that looked locked. And I couldn’t see anyone in the vicinity.

I gave up and climbed the stairs back to the entrance, called through the gate to ask the ticket-taker to come and let me out. He did, but he told me I should have had his colleague let me out at the bottom. I forget exactly what I replied, but I remained polite and I think I said something along the lines of “I couldn’t see him down there.” I might have added a harumph to that.

Three Churches

As I mentioned, I ducked into three churches today. I wasn’t terribly impressed with any of them so I won’t say much about them here. I’ll just post some pictures.

The three churches were the Dubrovnik Cathedral, Church of the Annunciation, and one the name of which I couldn’t see anywhere and which wasn’t named on Google Maps as far as I could tell.

According to the tour book I use, the Dubrovnik Cathedral has a treasury that’s jam-packed. I wouldn’t know about that. When I got there, stanchions and a cloth band between them blocked off the entrance to the treasury. A large sign clearly said it was supposed to be open then, but it wasn’t.

Aquarium

The Aquarium in Dubrovnik is an exceptionally modest affair. Two or three dozen not very big, old-school tanks hold local fish species. There’s not much more to say about it, so I won’t.

War Photo Limited Museum

The “War Photo Limited” museum/gallery is on two levels and, not surprisingly, displays war photos by renowned war photographers.

The exhibits are quite provoking, in most cases very sad, and in some cases very tragic.

The museum/gallery is on two levels. The lower level displays photos from the Ukrainian War. They aren’t only from the current Russian invasion, but also from Russian incursions from 2014.

The upper level contains photographs from the wars that ended Yugoslavia. It is divided into three sections: The war in Croatia, the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the war in Kosovo.

A sign on the stairway to the upper level says that is a permanent exhibit. I didn’t see any such sign on the lower level, so that might hold a temporary exhibit.

There is also a room upstairs displaying limited edition photos available for sale. The catalogue didn’t list any that sell for less than €1,000.

Note

The technology that drives my travel journal has become very ill and I can’t find a cure. I attempted some remedies, but none solved the problem.

I can still post to my journal, but through a different platform than I usually use. It’s now much more difficult and slower to create entries. And I can’t adjust images as much as I could before. As a result, if I can’t resolve the problem, I’ll probably publish shorter entries in the future than I have in the past. So, that’s something to celebrate.