Dubrovnik Old Town: Stradun, Palaces and the Old Port
An outdoor walk through Dubrovnik's Old Town, excluding building interiors and the city-wall walk. It goes through Pile Gate and along Stradun to Orlando's Column, the church of the city's patron saint, the Rector's Palace and the Old Port, ending at the Baroque Jesuit Stairs. Nine stops, about 50 minutes, all at street level inside the walls. Walking the walls themselves is a separate ticketed route.
This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.
At ~50 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Dubrovnik makes a full-day itinerary.
All Croatia walking tours · All 163 routes
Dubrovnik, Croatia · ~50 min · 1.1 km · 9 stops
Stops on this walk
1. Pile Gate
The oldest way into the city, and walls the townspeople refused to pull down.
Look up at the stone figure in the niche above the arch. This is Pile Gate, the western way into the old town. You are standing on the stone bridge in front of the gate. The Croatian Encyclopedia calls the western gate at Pile the oldest entrance into the city. The walls on either side run for 1,940 meters around the whole old town. On the land side the main wall is four to six meters thick, on the sea side one and a half to three. In places it rises to 25 meters. In the nineteenth century the townspeople refused to let sections be demolished, and in 1952 a society of citizens began restoring them. The round fortress on the corner above the sea is Bokar. Work began in 1461 to a design by Michelozzo Michelozzi of Florence. The Croatian Encyclopedia calls it the oldest casemate fortress in Europe. From the terrace of Brsalje, just west of the bridge, you can see Fort Lovrijenac on its sea rock, 37 meters high. The words carved over its gate say that freedom is not sold for all the gold in the world. The city tourist board notes that the fort played the Red Keep in Game of Thrones.
If you walk the walls, the route is ticketed and runs about two kilometers, and one of its entrances is just inside this gate. Allow at least an hour, and carry water in summer.
2. Onofrio's Fountain & the Franciscan Monastery
Sixteen stone faces that brought spring water to the city in 1438, and a pharmacy founded in 1317.
Look at the large many-sided fountain with the low dome. Around it are 16 carved stone masks, and the water comes out of their mouths. This is the Great Onofrio Fountain. It was designed by Onofrio della Cava from Naples, together with a smaller fountain at the far end of the main street. Both were built for public use and marked the city's new water supply of 1438. It brought spring water from Rijeka Dubrovačka, about twelve kilometers away. The tourist board says that old line is still part of the city's water network. The dome was damaged in the earthquake of 1667 and never regained its original grandeur. Near the fountain stands the small church of Saint Saviour. In 1520 an earthquake shook the city, and the Senate ordered this church built in thanks that same year. Petar Andrijić of Korčula built it, and it was finished in 1528. It came through the great earthquake of 1667 untouched, and it still stands in its original Renaissance form. The long wall and bell tower next to it belong to the Franciscan monastery. The friars first lived outside the walls at Pile, and war threats in the early fourteenth century moved them inside. Building began in 1317. Look at the carved doorway on the street side. Above it is a Pietà, Mary holding her dead son, carved in 1498 by the brothers Leonard and Petar Petrović. It is the part of the old church that tells how rich it was before 1667. Inside the monastery is a pharmacy founded in 1317, which the tourist board counts among the oldest working pharmacies in the world. The cloister is the work of Mihoje Brajkov of Bar, and the poet Ivan Gundulić is buried in the church.
The fountain steps are a public seat, so leave room for others. The cloister and monastery museum are ticketed. The church is a place of worship, so dress modestly if you enter.
3. Stradun, the Main Street
A street laid over filled-in sea, rebuilt in one style after the earthquake of 1667.
Look along the street in both directions. Polished limestone underfoot, and on each side a row of houses of the same height and the same style. Its formal name is Placa, but it is also known as Stradun. It is 298 meters long. The ground under your feet was once shallow sea. The oldest town grew on a limestone height on the south side, by the harbour. A strip of shallows separated it from the mainland, and it was filled in. The main street runs along that filled ground. Look at the lanes on the north side. Most of them leave the street as flights of steps. The city statute of 1272 set the final plan of the town and of this street. The houses you see are younger. The earthquake of 1667 ruined the city almost to its foundations, and many rich Gothic and Renaissance buildings were lost. Stradun was rebuilt afterwards in one uniform Baroque style. Look at the ground floors. The shop doors there are of a type known here as na koljeno, at the knee. The tourist board reads the whole design as the practical, trading spirit of the Republic in hard times. Today the street is still the city's main shopping street. In 1979 the old city was added to the World Heritage list. UNESCO describes how, despite the damage of 1667, Dubrovnik kept its Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque churches, monasteries, palaces and fountains.
The paving is smooth and slippery when wet, so watch your step. Many side lanes are long flights of stairs.
4. Luža Square: Orlando's Column & Sponza Palace
The flag of a free republic, a palace that weighed its goods before God, and bronze men who strike the hours.
Orlando's Column marks this square, in the open space in front of the bell tower. It was the heart of the old public square. If the sculpture is visible, look for the armored knight and his sword. A contract of 1418 commissioned it from Bonino of Milan, working with local masters, on the site of an older column. Knights like this stood in the squares of free trading towns across Europe as a sign of self-government. The flag of the Republic of Dubrovnik flew from its mast. Today it carries the Croatian flag. Laws and court sentences were proclaimed in front of it. The knight's forearm even served as a measure. The length known as Orlando's ell was Dubrovnik's unit for measuring length. Behind the column rises the city bell tower. Its great bell was cast in 1506 by Ivan Rabljanin, and bronze figures with hammers strike the hours on it. Locals call them the zelenci, the green ones. The tower was damaged in 1667 and rebuilt in 1929, and the figures up there now are copies. The originals are kept in the Rector's Palace. The palace with the arcaded porch is Sponza. It was designed by Paskoje Miličević and built between 1516 and 1522, in the Gothic and Renaissance mix typical of Dubrovnik. It held the customs house, the mint and an armoury. In the courtyard an inscription says that our weights do not let anyone cheat or be cheated. When I weigh goods, God himself weighs me. Since 1952 Sponza has housed the State Archives. Inside, a memorial room honors the defenders who died in the siege of 1991 and 1992. Attacks on the city by the Yugoslav People's Army began on the first of October 1991 and were heaviest in early December. The city's account records damage to Sponza Palace during the attacks of 1991. The siege was broken in July 1992.
Conservation work on Orlando's Column was expected to run into 2026, according to the city in 2025, so parts of it may be covered. Sponza's courtyard and the memorial room are open when the archive building is open, and hours vary. The square is used for city ceremonies, such as the Feast of Saint Blaise and the Summer Festival.
5. Church of Saint Blaise Crkva sv. Vlaha u Dubrovniku
The patron saint's church, rebuilt after a fire that, by the city's account, only his silver statue survived.
Look up the wide steps to the church front, with its columns and statues. This is the church of Saint Blaise, Sveti Vlaho, the patron saint of Dubrovnik. The tourist board describes its style as ornate Venetian Baroque. The church you see dates from 1715. On the order of the Senate, the Venetian builder Marino Gropelli began it in 1706. It replaced a Romanesque church of the fourteenth century on the same spot. That older church was damaged in the earthquake of 1667, and in 1706 a great fire destroyed it completely. The city's account of that fire is the story people tell here. Everything burned, and only the silver statue of Saint Blaise came out unharmed. The citizens added an inscription to it. All the other statues of gold, silver and brass melted in the fire, it says, while the saint's was saved by a miracle. The statue holds a model of the city, and the tourist board notes that it shows the city's architecture as it once was. Why this saint? Dubrovnik has honored him since the tenth century. The city's chroniclers record that Venetian ships once anchored nearby, claiming they only needed food and water. Saint Blaise appeared to a priest named Stojko and warned him of a night attack, and the city was saved. The priest described an old man with a long beard, a bishop's mitre and a staff. That is how the saint appears on the gates and towers. His feast is on the third of February, and it is also the Day of the City. UNESCO lists the Festivity of Saint Blaise, the patron of Dubrovnik, as intangible cultural heritage.
This is a working parish church. If a service is under way, stay at the back or come back later, and dress modestly inside.
6. Rector's Palace
Where the head of the Republic lived for just one month, under the words forget private affairs.
Look at the open porch along the front of the palace, and at the carved tops of its columns. This was the Rector's Palace, the seat of government of the Republic of Dubrovnik. The Rector was the head of the Republic, and he lived here for a term of only one month. The palace held the hall of the Minor Council and the Senate, the Rector's rooms, a courtroom, offices, prisons, an armoury and a store. At its core it is a Gothic palace, rebuilt in Renaissance and Baroque phases. Gunpowder explosions damaged it twice in the fifteenth century. After the first, in 1435, Onofrio della Cava rebuilt it in late Gothic style and gave it the plan you see, with a central courtyard and this front porch. The capitals were carved by Pietro di Martino of Milan. His capital showing Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, survives on the right half column of the porch. A second explosion in 1463 brought down the west front. Two famous builders, Juraj Dalmatinac and Michelozzo of Florence, worked briefly on the repairs. After 1667 the courtyard was partly rebuilt with a Baroque staircase. Over the surviving doorway that led into the Great Council hall, a Latin inscription says forget private affairs, attend to public ones. In the courtyard stands a statue of Miho Pracat, a rich sea captain and benefactor.
The palace is the Cultural History Museum and is ticketed. The original bronze bell strikers from the city bell tower are kept inside. Concerts are sometimes held in the courtyard.
7. The Old Port
A harbour closed every night with a chain, guarded by a fortress and a breakwater laid without mortar.
Look out across the harbour basin toward the open sea. This small port was the heart of a maritime republic. Its present shape dates from the fifteenth century, and the engineer behind it was Paskoje Miličević. The long stone arm ahead of you is the Kaše breakwater, built in 1485 to his plans. It protects the harbour from southeast winds and waves, and from enemies. It is made of large stone blocks laid without mortar on wooden foundations. Before it existed, a heavy chain was stretched across the harbour every night, from the Mulo tower to the tower of Saint Luke. The breakwater made that chain much shorter. On the corner of the harbour stands Saint John's Fortress, once called the Mulo tower. Building started in 1346. The fortress houses an aquarium on the ground floor and the Maritime Museum above. Along the city side of the harbour, look for the big arches of the Great Arsenal. Built at the end of the twelfth century and enlarged in the fifteenth, it was the city's shipyard, where large ships were repaired. Three arches are open and a fourth was walled up. Today they hold a café and the city theatre. Around 1500 the painter Nikola Božidarević showed Saint Blaise holding the city, harbour and all, in a triptych. The port in his hand already has the outline you see now.
Boats to the island of Lokrum leave from this harbour, about ten minutes away by sea. Keep clear of mooring lines on the quay edge.
8. Cathedral of the Assumption
A Baroque cathedral raised after 1667 on the site of a church tied to Richard the Lionheart's vow.
Look at the church front with its columns, and at the dome rising behind. This is the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary. People here simply call it the Cathedral. The earthquake of 1667 destroyed the Romanesque cathedral that stood on this spot, a basilica with a dome. Rebuilding needed outside help. Stjepan Gradić, a scholar from Dubrovnik who worked at the Vatican Library, gathered support and brought leading Italian architects. Andrea Buffalini drew the plan, Paolo Andreotti began building in 1672, and the local master Ilija Katičić finished it in 1713. A famous tradition is attached to the older church. As the tourist board tells it, the English king Richard the Lionheart was shipwrecked off the island of Lokrum in 1192, on his way home from the Third Crusade. He vowed money for a great church in the place where he reached dry land, and that gift is said to have helped build the Romanesque cathedral. The ground under the cathedral holds more. While repairing damage from an earthquake in 1979, archaeologists found the remains of an even older cathedral beneath the Romanesque one. The tourist board dates it to the seventh century, early evidence that a real town already stood here. The cathedral treasury was guarded with three keys. The Rector held one, the bishop another, and the secretary of the Republic the third. The door opened only when all three were turned together. Among its treasures are the reliquaries of the head and the hand of Saint Blaise.
The treasury is ticketed. Dress modestly, and if Mass is under way, stay at the back or come back later.
9. Gundulić Square & the Jesuit Stairs
A morning market under a poet's statue, and Baroque stairs modeled on Rome's Spanish Steps.
Look up the broad staircase in front of you, curving toward the church at the top. These are the Jesuit Stairs, built in 1738 to a design by the Roman architect Pietro Passalacqua. They were modeled on the Spanish Steps in Rome. The church above is Saint Ignatius, the Jesuit church, which locals simply call the Jesuits. It was designed by Andrea Pozzo, the Jesuit architect and painter, and completed in 1725. Beside it stands the Collegium Ragusinum, the Jesuit college. The Jesuits arrived in the first half of the sixteenth century, but the college opened only in 1658. Many houses in this part of the city had to be pulled down to make room for the church and college. After the earthquake of 1667 some plots in the city were never rebuilt, and the Croatian Encyclopedia notes that the Jesuit college rose on one of them. After the Jesuit order was dissolved in 1773, another teaching order took over the college. Today the building is a classical grammar school. Look across Gundulić Square. The bronze statue is Ivan Gundulić, the great Dubrovnik poet of the seventeenth century, born in 1589. Ivan Rendić made it in 1892, and the reliefs on the base show scenes from his epic poem Osman. Lines of his praise liberty as worth more than all silver, all gold and all human lives. The tourist board describes a market of fresh fruit and vegetables here in the mornings, and summer festival stages in the evenings. It also notes that the stairs were the setting of a well-known scene in Game of Thrones.
The stairs are a public route, so keep to one side when you stop for photos. The church at the top is a place of worship and is free when open.