 | McLae´s guide to Croatia |  |
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The City Dubrovnik
The city of Ragusa/Dubrovnik was based on maritime trade; in the Middle Ages, it became the only eastern Adriatic city-state to rival Venice. Supported by its wealth and skilled diplomacy, the city achieved a remarkable level of development during the 15th and 16th centuries. Dubrovnik was one of the centers of the development of the Croatian language and literature, home to many notable poets, playwrights, painters, mathematicians, physicists and other scholars. History: Dubrovnik was founded by joining two small towns: Laus, a town on a small island off the southern Dalmatian coast, which provided shelter for the Italic refugees from the nearby city of Epidaurum (today Cavtat); and Dubrava, a settlement of Slavic immigrants at the foot of the forested Sr? hill. According to a popular myth presented through the legendary Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja from 1171-1196, Dubrovnik was raised by King Bella a. k. a. Pavlimir of Travunia, son of King C(aslav of Klonimir of the House of Vlastimir. In early 1077, Serbian King Mihailo of the House of Voislav assaulted the Byzantine enclave of Ragusa and conquered it. It became the ecclesiastical center of the Kingdom of Duklja, but Mihailo's heir, King Constantine Bodin of the same House of Voislav of Duklja and Dalmatia lost it as it was annexed by the Normans from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. King Bodin managed to reconquer it soon, and build a Fortress in it which became known as the Tower of Constantine Bodin.
From its establishment in the 7th century, the town was under the protection of the Byzantine Empire. After the Crusades, Ragusa/Dubrovnik came under the sovereignty of Venice (1205–1358), and by the Peace Treaty of Zadar in 1358 it became part of the Hungarian–Croatian Kingdom. Between the 14th century and 1808 Dubrovnik ruled itself as a free state named Respublica Ragusina, the Republic of Ragusa also known as the Republic of Dubrovnik. The Republic of Ragusa reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Dubrovnik thalassocracy rivalled the Republic of Venice and other Italian maritime republics. During this time in Dubrovnik worked one of the most famous cannon and bell founder of this time: Ivan Rabljanin ( Magister Johannes Baptista Arbensis de la Tolle). The city was ruled by aristocracy that formed two city Councils (Vijec'e). They maintained a strict system of social classes, but they also abolished slave trade early in the 15th century and valued liberty highly. The city successfully balanced its sovereignty between the interests of Venice and the Ottoman Empire for centuries. The Republic gradually declined after a crisis of Mediterranean shipping — and especially a catastrophic earthquake in 1667. In 1699 it was forced to sell two patches of its territory to the Ottomans in order to protect itself from the advancing Venetian forces. Its final demise was caused not by Venice, but by Napoleon's forces, which conquered first the Venetian territories and then the Dubrovnik republic in 1806. In 1808, Marshal Marmont abolished the republic and amalgamated its territory into the Illyrian provinces. In 1815, by the resolution of Congress of Vienna, Dubrovnik was annexed to Austria (from 1867 Austria–Hungary), and remained in the Kingdom of Dalmatia until 1918. During that time its official name was Ragusa. It then became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929). At the very beginning of the World War II, Dubrovnik was first part of the Independent State of Croatia. From April 1941 until September 1943, Dubrovnik was occupied by the Italian army and after that by the Germans. In October 1944, the Partisans liberated Dubrovnik from the Germans and it became part of the second Yugoslavia in 1945. Despite the demilitarization of the old town by the Yugoslav People's Army in the 1970s, in an attempt to prevent it from becoming a casualty of war following Croatia's independence in 1991, the same army attacked and surrounded the city on October 1, 1991 and the siege lasted until May 1992. The heaviest artillery attack happened on December 6 with 19 people killed and 60 wounded. Total casualty in the conflict on this area according to the Croatian Red Cross were 114 killed civilians, among them the celebrated poet Milan Milisic' (born 1941). Following the end of the war, a major rebuilding project led by the Croatian authorities and UNESCO began. They rebuilt the city in the ancient style to keep its sense of beauty and history. As well as rebuilding damaged buildings, surviving structures were strengthened against earthquakes. As of 2005, most damaged buildings in the city have been repaired. |
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