Last night we made the 700-mile journey from the Greek island of Rhodes to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Now our big Italian cruise ship is pulling into Dubrovnik. It’s a spectacular scene, seeing the city walls from just outside the harbor. Let’s go see what’s inside.
It’s a beautiful, sunny morning. We’re slowly approaching Dubrovnik’s Old Port. It’s quiet. Maybe they’ve shut the engines down so we’re just coasting in, nice and slow.
Time to Disembark
The water here is deep blue. Tiny tree-covered islands pop up all around us. Looks like we’re going to weigh anchor pretty far out, so we’ll have to get on a tender to take us ashore.
When we finally stopped, tenders from the harbor came out to get us. When you’re on a gigantic cruise ship, you forget that you’re on water. To be reminded, just climb aboard one of those little tenders. They bob up and down like corks with every little ripple.
We bobbed along in the tender, heading towards the Old Port. The city walls grew larger and larger as we approached. I thought the wall around Rhodes was impressive, but this one makes that wall seem like child’s play.
I guess I have a thing for walls. What does that say about my inner self? What would a psychiatrist have to say about that? Walls are usually thought of in a negative way. What am I trying to keep out? And why? Whoa. That’s enough analysis for one day!
We reached the Old Port and disembarked. By then we were right up next to the city wall. After a short walk to a gigantic entryway, we stepped inside Dubrovnik’s Old City.
Once inside, the thing that’s most striking is that everything is made of stone. Some of it is clearly new, and some must be 100’s of years old. It looks like a city made entirely of stone. OK. We need to know more about this place.
Ragusa
For a thousand years, locals called this place Dubrovnik, but the official name was the Republic of Ragusa. Ragusa had been around since the 7th century. It prospered and became a productive port in the Byzantine empire.
Ragusa grew to the point that it posed a threat to nearby Venice. In 1205, the Venetians attacked. Venice ruled Ragusa for the next 150 years. When the Venetian empire ran out of steam, Ragusa regained its independence.
By making politically astute trade agreements with potential enemies, Ragusa managed to remain independent for the next 500 years. Napoleon put an end to that when he and his army came to town.
When Napoleon ran out of steam, Dubrovnik was absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The year was 1815. Life in Ragusa was stable again for the next 100 years.
Ragusa becomes Dubrovnik
The Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I. A large swath of territory south of Austria was designated as a new state: the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. At the same time, the city of Ragusa got its name changed to Dubrovnik.
The changes went into effect in 1918. It wasn’t long before the Serbian political party started taking control of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The crescendo came in 1928, when a Serb politico shot at five members of the opposition Croatian party. Two of them died.
A few months later, the (Serb) King abolished the constitution, banned opposing political parties, and renamed the country Yugoslavia. That was the end of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but not the end of the story.
When World War II started, the Yugoslav government sided with the Nazi’s. Croatians in Yugoslavia had finally had all they could stand. They said in so many words, “We’re out of it!”, and declared themselves to be the Independent State of Croatia.
It was a gutsy move, eh? We’ll see how gutsy next time.
To be continued…
