Croatia: Dubrovnik Walking Tour (August 2016)


Our Old Town Dubrovnik walking tour taught us about the Stradun/Placa (the main pedestrian promenade), the Sponza Palace (used as the customs house, trading center, treasury, armory, bank, and school), the Clock Tower (over 100 feet tall, it chimes at noon daily when its twin bronze figures ring the bell), Orlando's Column (a stone pillar on which messages were published and sentences carried out), the Church of St. Blaise (the patron saint of Dubrovnik), Onofrio's Fountain (a water supply system with a huge central dome and 16 faucets in the shape of heads), and the Franciscan Monastery (with its cloister and still-operating pharmacy [the oldest in the world], and small museum of pharmacy items, relics, and liturgical memorabilia)

Our guide Tom recommended that we dine at Kopun Restaurant for lunch, which was excellent. We ate outdoors on the restaurant’s umbrella-covered terrace that adjoins Poljana Square, where the Church of St Ignatius and the Jesuit Collegium Ragusinum are located. It is also a favorite spot for photographs on the "Game of Thrones" tours. (We do not watch the series, but visitors seemed to be reenacting scenes with swords and shield in front of key buildings.) The Church of St Ignatius is single nave, with side chapels and a semicircular divided apse, decorated by Baroque frescoes with scenes from the life of St. Ignatius de Loyola; in addition, its belfry houses the oldest bell in Dubrovnik, cast in 1355.

We enjoyed afternoon drinks on the terrace at Klarisa Restoran. (Saint Klara Monastery was the best known of eight women’s monasteries in the 13th century; girls of noble birth were ordained as Franciscan sisters called Klarisas.) We then returned to the hotel to relax, enjoyed the executive lounge happy hour, and then walked back to Old Town to dine al fresco at Pizzeria Domenica.



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