Dick and Jane's Travels

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinati

2010-04-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinat

Marfa, Texas

Visited 1 and 2 April, 2010

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The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinati displays the works of a few modern artists in a space integrated with the Chihuahuam desert which surrounds it in Marfa, Texas. Because of its distant and sometimes hostile location, few will visit these intriguing exhibitions. But you can through our Nikon's lens.

Here come the Judd

The minimal artist and uber-art critic Donald Judd stopped in Marfa once on his way to Baja -- and kept coming back. The Texas light and the remoteness from New York city were the two great attractions. Finally he scraped together funding to create a most unconventional museum -- one dedicated to showing the work of three artists in permanent exhibitions they helped design.

While Judd's vision may be compelling, it makes many Mohammads come to rather distant mountains -- and deprives huge audiences of seeing some rather intriguing work. During the peak tourist season, only a few dozen people per day stop by. The tour takes the whole day. This is one of the poorest and least populated areas of the country, averaging only two (often strange) people per square mile. Two major airports are each about a four hour drive away.
But Chinati redeems itself by encouraging photography of the works -- unlike most museums. While photography does not serve sculpture all that well, it's all we've got unless you make the trip here.

Judd converted a deteriorating army camp into one of the world's most unconventional museums. The site exploits 1) the original unmodified camp buildings (above left), 2) modified buildings to control the natural light as seen with the Quonset-like hut (center), and 3) the high Chihuahuan desert landscape as symbolized by the mesa rising at right.

Judd insisted that modern sculpture be displayed permanently in an environment the sculptors, not museum curators, controlled. His essays touted such displays as the standard for future exhibitions. Originally the Chinati Foundation (named after the nearby mountain chain) was to display the works of Judd and two of his friends: the minimalist Dan Flavin and the Abstract Expressionist John Chamberlain.

Above we see a case in point: this was one of two artillery sheds for the old Fort D.A. Russell. Judd (an architect of sorts) added the semi-round corrugated galvanized roof to improve the looks of the building. Mundane garage doors were replaced by huge windows, the better to encourage Texas's blazing sun to splash over the 100 untitled sculptures that Judd would create inside.

Here's a side view of the same shed showing the boxy sculptures inside -- and the rough terrain of the exterior. Our two-day visit started on April's Fools Day 2010- as good a time as any to let these minimalists and the desert spring have their way with us.
This is one of at least four spaces at the Chinati Foundation dedicated to Judd's sculpture. Nearby (and far away in New York City), the Judd Foundation shows more.

Judd's work is captured in four main displays on this old base: permanent displays of boxes (inside and out); a temporary exhibition of his wall hangings (more boxes); and a former gym empty save for his furniture (which is, of course, pretty boxish). Let's start here with these shiny boxes which blur the line between their surface and their surroundings.

Better things than chemistry

The two artillery sheds hold 100 identically sized aluminum boxes conceptualized by Judd specifically for this space.
These buildings originally had sides filled with garage doors like modern loading docks or storage units. This allowed easy access during WWII to the chemical mortars and ammunition. These powerful weapons could hurl shells over two miles with precision of about 50 yards. Their name derives from the fact that they could fire both white phosphorus (to block the enemy's view) and mustard gas (which was never used, leaving the US with a huge chemical weapon stockpile at the end of the war.)

These two sheds occupy the edge of the 340 acre museum site and roughly parallel US 67 which runs 1600 miles from Iowa to the Mexican border. Perhaps by coincidence, the artillery shed axis is nearly perpendicular to the path of the sun in this part of Texas. But perhaps not: the many U-shaped barracks which housed the troops are laid out in an arch at left which would minimize the sunlight which hits the cot area.

Here we stand outside looking through one of the artillery sheds and at the aluminum box sculptures inside -- and the cement box sculptures in the field beyond. More on them later.
The Chihuahuan desert floor can experience high temperature of up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit (71 Celsius) in the summer. These buildings are not only naturally lit, but seem to lack air conditioning as well. (Their roofs sport vents, however.) Job security for the foundation's conservationists!

Inside, the sun interacts with sculpture and people. Often I would take a picture, examine it in my small camera display, and find that the aluminum box had all but disappeared into a splash of sunlight.

The two sheds contain exactly 100 of these milled boxes -- all with identical exterior dimensions and none of them with common interiors. Sometimes they reflect, sometimes they are transparent, sometimes both.

Before his minimalist art produce maximal profit, Judd supported himself as an art critic and reviewer. He viewed the Chinati Foundation as being the standard to calibrate the display of art. He wrote in the catalog: "It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place."

The 100 untitled sculptures each are 41 X 51 inches by 6 feet wide. Every outside is the same, every inside is different.

Picasso meets Judd: Here a photographer both captures and creates the scene, reflected in the boxes and back again, her body image fractured and spread -- and giving new meaning to Cubism.

These works were created from 1982 through 1986 and were designed with geometrical partitioning of the space in the two sheds. Judd often used math to help design his sculptures.

On the rear wall is a sign in German probably meant to inspire the prisoners-of-war held at this camp.

Here's a detail of the construction of these milled aluminum boxes fabricated by the Lippincott Company in Connecticut.

The Darth Vader capsule

Judd's sculpture was pretty much all about boxes. While he abhorred the term minimalism, as a critic he defined the movement and its emphasis on the experiencing of the physical object rather than the representation of some other object or idea.

Judd moved here in 1981 after tiring of the New York art scene.

The semi-circular ends of the building are corrugated steel but were intended by Judd to be made of glass. From the outside, the building now appears twice as tall and has an army base feel to it. Inside, the function is unchanged as no new internal volume was created.

Through an original window, we view the next shed.

What is real, and what is Memorex?

Same box as before without the people or sunlight!

Still the same box!

A work of art

Here's my favorite...

...from both sides.

While the exterior has a "Quonset hut" roof added by Judd for aesthetic reasons, the interior keeps many of the rough touches of the original artillery shed as we see here in the concrete ceiling.

The buildings are laid out on a northeast-southwest axis so the morning and afternoon sun in this part of the world hits the structure nearly broadside -- and changes the boxes accordingly.

At 10:30 in the morning, the west windows are placid.

The Chinati Foundation got started with a grant from one of those de Menils who have benefited Houston's art world so well. The funding structure was the DIA foundation.

Jane in a moment of reflection

The Dia Foundation was started by a daughter and son-in-law of Houstonian Dominique de Menil. The Dia foundation likes to support art projects which are unlikely to happen otherwise due to their scale.

These boxes float into each other, disappear, and serve as table tops for the mesas on the horizon.

But Dia support of Chinati had a troubled beginning. From 1980 through 1986, Dia gave Judd US$ 4 million to start the Marfa project, then withheld further support because of financial problems. Judd was by then a Texan and, of course, threatened to sue for the rest. This led to the establishment of the Chinati Foundation -- and continued Dia support.

Judd died in 1994 at age 65. He started as an expressionist but became enamored of industrial materials and was one of the first artists to design and allow others to fabricate (unless we consider that this is what happened with the great artist studios of the Renaissance and before.) Once again, art was a collaborative affair. Judd's collaborators also include the sun, the Texas high desert, and the viewers of his work. (And if that statement is no fabrication, then this art can't be captured in photographs. Zeno's paradox, anyone?)

The original shed had garage doors -- now replaced by Judd's massive windows. Through these windows, we see our next Judd sculpture set in the background, the cement boxes.

Give me land, lots of land -- don't box me in

Google maps show 13 of the 15 concrete (literally) sculptures of Judd at the edge of the 350 acre property. While the old army base forms a segment of a large circle, Judd placed his boxes on a rigid north-south axis -- which coincides exactly with the 104th degree of longitude and measures exactly one kilometer in length. We told you he likes math!

As Pat Robertson would say "True story": when I first saw these, my knowledge of minimalism was quite minimal. I asked our guide (a foundation intern) if these were pill boxes from the days of the army fort -- but only because I couldn't imagine such a large sewer being installed in this dry desert. She didn't seem too shocked by my question, as if she gets it from Philistine visitors all the time. (Or maybe she thought it was my own lame April's fool joke.)

A thoughtful essay claims that one of these sculptures was struck by lightning. Our guide said that all of them had been freshly restored. Given 35 mph gusts of wind, we chose to photograph these from a distance.

A small museum building displays the drawing Judd used to design the boxes (both the aluminum mill internal boxes and the external concrete ones.)

By dividing his kilometer-long space, Judd determined that each sculpture set would be 60 meters (measured center-to-center) from each other. (My calculator puts them at 66.6 meters apart. Go figure.)

The 15 sculpture sets have 60 boxes in total -- each of them 2.5 X 2.5 meters and 5 meters long. (The entire world knows what that means except for those of you who live in Burma, Liberia, and the United States who think of it as about 8 feet X 8 feet by 17 feet.)

Unlike the 100 aluminum mill boxes inside the artillery sheds, these boxes have four external variations: one short side open, both short sides open, one long side open, both long sides open. This allows the interiors to capture different amounts of light as the sun passes over them.

The first two concrete boxes were installed in 1980 and the last four in 1984. They were here before most of their shiny inside cousins.

The kilometer-long site is about the only available flat portion of the property in these foothills.

Judd in the box

And now for something completely different...

...Well, sort of different. It's the same in that this is a Judd sculpture and so it's going to be all about boxes. Like the concrete boxes atop the 104th parallel, these boxes project from a long spine -- and have a mathematical basis. Unlike those boxes, this is a temporary exhibition.

This third set of Judd boxes is lit, of course, by natural light.

These sculptures have a mathematical basis: From the right to left, each galvanized box is doubled. From left to right, each space between is doubled. Others here use natural numbers. Others by Judd (not displayed here) use Fibonacci sequences like those that inspired the Pythagoreans and the Greek architects with their golden rectangles.

Close-ups provide a different view...

...including a bit of kaleidoscope that Dan Flavin might have liked.

Above is a piece of work used to thinking inside the box. The box at upper right peers into his soul.

Did Mondrian predict minimalism?

This temporary exhibition uses a barracks, like the Flavin permanent displays. However, this one uses side windows as well. All light is still natural, of course.

The Arena

Our final Judd exhibit is his minimalist furniture displayed in the old fort gymnasium, now called "The Arena."

The "arena" started life in 1914 as a hangar and in WWII served as the base gym. After that war, Fort Russell was given to the Texas National Guard and eventually most of the land was parceled up and sold to local citizens.With the Dia foundation, Judd purchased the buildings and 340 acres of land in the late 1970s.

On the way to the Arena, we passed over this mini-Stonehenge. It's called "Sea Lava Circles" and is a 1988 work by Richard Long who collected this volcanic rock in Iceland. (Rocks to Newcastle? The nearby Chinati mountains were made by volcanoes, so there's little need to import such rock.) Each stone just touches the next and the outer circle is almost 14 feet in diameter. Judd put it on the old tennis court.
It's one of two sculptures with an Icelandic connection here in this hot desert.

Inside, the Arena is sparse -- the better to appreciate the Judd furniture. The hardwood floor has been given over to gravel punctuated by long concrete strips that kept the hardwood from sinking into the desert. When the fort was abandoned after WWII, the wood in the floor was re-purposed and replaced by sand. This made sense as the basketball players were replaced by horses, hence the name "arena."When Judd restored the space, he intended for it to have one of his long sculptures.

Here we were allowed to touch Judd's work. In fact, you can buy this furniture on the open market or from the Judd foundation. Here we see Dick thinking inside the box.
Judd created cement floors at each end of the space. The walls up to the high windows are of adobe but the roof is held up by a 66' truss which Judd wrote was pretty good for 1914 construction. Before it was a gym, this served as a hangar for the biplanes that patrolled the border and tried to keep Pancho Villa at bay. While we were here, winds gusted to 35 mph -- probably enough to keep a fragile bi-plane indoors.

I loved these doors! They only get opened a few times a day, but when they do, a crowd streams in. These pivot on a central axis and turn to let folks in and out on both sides. Like all of the best Judd stuff, it's basic, clean, and elegant in its simplicity.

Another view of the door, looking out at the gate. Boxes rule! The doors at the end of this pathway are freestanding.

Here's a bed for two with a bundling board sufficient even for Puritans (or perhaps rowdy siblings.) It's high enough so each gets his own privacy.

Rather than rip up the old foundation, Judd adapted it to a patio.Here Judd's minimalist chairs become benches with the addition of a single plank. His furniture continues to be on sale. Plywood chairs like these run about US$ 2000. If that's not enough, the Judd Foundation hopes to raise US$ 20 Million next month in an auction.

We found rosemary common in Marfa as a decorative shrub. Typically it grows much larger here than what we typically see in Houston -- and throughout the high desert we saw it blooming which we never remember happening in Houston.

A view from the Arena patio over Richard Long's sculpture and towards Ilya Kabakov's School No. 6.

The Incredible Lightness of Dan Flavin

The second of the three artists who anchored the Chinati Foundation was Dan Flavin, master of the fluorescent light.

The old army barracks were U-shaped buildings with rows of cots on the two long arms and an assembly area at the bottom of the U. Six of these buildings have been dedicated to the light sculptures of Dan Flavin.

These barracks are the only galleries that were NOT completely naturally lit. At the end of the long halls, two windows admit the light. Given the orientation of the buildings, this would be very intense light in the morning.

Here we look down at the bottom of the "U" at center. The two windows on each side are the only openings inside. Often the courtyard has a fruit tree which in the desert Spring could steal the show from the art inside. Note the dormers on the roof. We didn't see much sign of air conditioning here in a town where summer highs average over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here's a typical side view showing all of the windows boarded up.

This provides a stark interior space lit only by sunlight that in the morning would stream through the two windows at the bottom of each leg of the "U" barracks. Here the afternoon sun provides a softer glow.

Another courtyard view showing the boarded up windows.

The stark white walls prepare the viewer for the gentle pastel tones emanating from the bottom of the "U" from twisted parallel rooms ...

...and leading to the Flavin sculptures made from then off-the-shelf fluorescent tubes 8 feet in length and in various colors no longer manufactured.

Flavin's work occupies six of the old military barracks and each is the same: very long stark white spaces that culminate in two of these colored fluorescent light sculptures.

The viewer enters a perfectly rectangular space through the long barrack arms that once held soldiers' cots. At the bottom of the "U," they are greeted by glowing tilted spaces of colored light.

A gallery owner who was selling Flavin prints told us that Flavin said when the bulbs burnt out, the art was over. Conservationists are not about to let that happen. They have extra bulbs in stock, as does the Flavin foundation. Burnt out bulbs are replaced by ones slightly used; new ones would glow too brightly. When Flavin did this work, these bulbs were off-the-shelf items.

If Flavin did make that statement, then is the art over when the people go home and the museum staff turns off the power? If a fluorescent bulb glows in the forest, and nobody sees it, is it art?

Flavin was no stranger to our Houston de Menils, of course. Dominique de Menil had him conceptualize a permanent installation starting in 1990. He completed the design two days before his death in 1996 and his studio implemented it in Richmond Hall, an old grocery store two miles from our house that's now part of the Menil Collection. Here we do not live by bread alone.It was not only Flavin's last commission, but Dominique's as well. She died the next year.

Like our Houston Flavin dedicated space, this gallery was also implemented by Flavin's studio after his death.

The six buildings have the sculptors presented at the bottom of their "U." Typically these are housed in long tilted corridors -- two sculptures at each end.

The lights are spaced far enough apart to see fellow Houstonians, should they be on the other side.

Flavin had a 35-year love affair with light, starting in 1961. In 1963, at the age of 30, he began to work exclusively with off-the-shelf fluorescent tubes.

Here we see the two parallel corridors that occupy the ends of 5 of the 6 barracks used in the Flavin exhibition.

Most of his work is untitled -- but dedicated to fellow artists, especially to Russian sculptor/painter/architect/musician Vladmir Tatlin. From Tatlin, he picked up the technique of putting his art in a corner where it would interact with several sides of the room. Most of his "Tatlin" dedications are stark cool white fluorescent including several displayed in the Houston Menil space.

While I couldn't find a way to get a church interior into this set of slides, one of Flavin's last works was a church interior in Milan, Italy. Often in religious painting, light streams denote the presence of God.(Flavin spent 5 years in a seminary but was never ordained. His studio was made from a converted church in Bridgehampton, NY -- now run by the Dia foundation.) If you are interested, check out the church by clicking here.

Two of the few Flavin sculptures not hidden in a double tilted corridor

Outside the Flavin barracks, the trees were bursting with the Texas spring...

...and inside at the end of each barrack arm, we have two Wyeth windows framing the Chihuahuan desert.

It's not that easy being green.

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Sometimes Flavin made light of us.

The Smashing Success of John Chamberlain

The Chinati Foundation's John Chamberlain building occupies an old factory along the railroad tracks in downtown Marfa, about a 5 minute drive from the old Fort Russell.

Donald Judd bought up several buildings in Marfa and turned them into studios, exhibition space, and architect offices. When you see a fence such as this....

...it means that it is "branding" a Judd Foundation or Chianti Foundation space. The mortar projects outward about an inch from the bricks. Here the fence surrounds the large Chamberlain building.

But the fence also brings together the various smaller buildings incorporated into the Judd empire. Judd also purchased several farms and owned nearly 40,000 acres of Texas desert at one time. (Probably enough to support 4 or 5 cows.)

Inside, Chamberlain's work spreads out inside an old textile factory which processed wool from the sheep who could scratch their nourishment from the local desert hills.

Inside, 23 or so of Chamberlain's smashed auto parts sculptures occupy the space of what was once a wool factory.

Chrome and industrial paint emblazon this space converted by Judd and Chamberlain.

Rivets and welds hold these structures together.

Again, natural light is the sole source of illumination. Given the size of the space, skylights are sometimes used. This Chamberlain work is on loan from Houston's Menil Collection. We are in no hurry to get it back.

Ten of the sculptures are named after Texas sites and were fashioned (assembled?) in Amarillo -- home of the ten buried Cadillacs which seem to have nothing to do with this exhibition. We may have buried the wrong stuff.

OK, for those of you who like Chamberlain's stuff, I apologize.

It's not obvious why the king of boxes (Judd) would be pals with the king of chaos (Chamberlain).

Chamberlain always gave as his reason for using auto fenders that it was free. His first victim was a 1929 Ford which became a piece called "Shortstop."

This went on for nearly 60 years. While we see only fenders here, Chamberlain also used paper bags, toy trucks, and aluminum foil.

Here a diffuse skylight helps illuminate the center of this large space.

When describing his art, Chamberlain has said that 1) it means nothing and 2) "It's not a product, it's information." That helps.

In the middle of the floor, we see a sandbox. Just when we thought the sculpture was abstract expressionist, it becomes minimalist. Or maybe they have a kid -- or cat.

Besides the wrecked cars, the entrance sports this large couch that eats people while they watch a video made by Chamberlain.

Artist who have done time

The Chinati Foundation hosts about six artists a year in an artist-in-residence program.

Messin' with Art

The first artist-in-residence long preceded Donald Judd to Marfa. These were the anonymous and bored souls who decorated their mess halls. At right we see some of the horse maintenance equipment left over from cavalry days and displayed here.

The mess halls run perpendicular to the barracks. Most are now used to display other artists' works, but Judd liked the paintings on this one and preserved them.

Here's another view of the contraptions that have something to do with holding a horse still while he gets his maintenance. Don't ask -- or give ideas to Dick Cheney.

A boarded-up door becomes a bit of found art.

Judd had these frames installed to provide a bit of protection for the wall mosaics which are otherwise exposed to the harsh climate. (On a single day in April, we found a variation in Marfa temperature from 24 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Before the iPod: we found Marfa with its own quirky NPR affiliate.

Longhorn fans were around even then.

And something for the dogs. An old Texas saying is that it's so hot that the trees are bribing the dogs. Typically we found this area so dry that trees were rare indeed. Truth be told: hydrants were even rarer. One local who served his volunteer fire department for years says because of the remoteness of homes and the lack of water, they rarely save a burning house. Their motto is, "We've never lost a slab."

The Pop art of John Wesley

The first artist-in-residence was John Wesley who lived here in 1989. A considerably rehabilitated mess hall has been given over to displaying his paintings.

Pop artist Wesley was in his early 60s during his residency here. Although representational, his pals were the minimalists Flavin and Judd.

As an art critic, Judd praised Wesley early in his career as an up-and-comer.

The Paper Sculpture of Carl Andre

Another mess hall displays the "paper sculpture" of Carl Andre. Andre once channeled Caravaggio but was acquitted for murdering his fellow artist and wife. He is known mostly as a sculptor of monumental public art. But here we see quite a different side...

...these are his "poems." From 1960 through 1964, he sculpted little but wrote these visuals on a typewriter...

...look closely and you will see the same word typed many times. At left we have the thigh, at right the knee. Andre pretty much moves through the body like the song "Dry Bones."

These poems (or drawings) range from 1958 through 1972 and were donated by Andre to the foundation.

With Judd and Flavin, Carl Andre helped define minimalism. Here he designed the glass cases himself. Did he intend the viewer's body parts to be reflected while they read his minimalist poems about body parts?

Copper by Roni Horn

Another mess hall features two copper cylinders by Roni Horn, an American with a huge fetish for Iceland.

Only four visitors at a time were allowed into this mess hall; the reason given was that these were very delicate works.

Claes and Coosje -- and Louie

Judd had many artist friends. Two of his New York buddies, Claes Oldenburg and his wife and collaborator Coosje van Bruggen, visited the foundation in 1987 and were inspired by the grave of "Louie" -- the oldest horse in the cavalry when it was disbanded. All the army's horses and all the army's men went elsewhere, but Louie stayed. The two sculptors created this aluminum and polyurethane foam work in 1991.

Fort Russell started life as a cavalry camp a century ago when Pancho Villa's revolution in Mexico threatened the Texas borderlands. It grew during WWI but was abandoned during the depression. WWII saw it redeployed to house WACs, chemical mortar battalions (they could fire mustard gas -- but didn't), and German prisoners-of-war.
The stone above marks the grave of the last horse in the cavalry: Louie. This base inspired the Oldenburgs to copy it for their horseshoe. Every large American town has an Oldenburg including Houston's library mouse. Now tiny Marfa does too.

TOP GUN? At its peak, the cavalry here housed 400 horses or mules. But this spot's quirky place in history is probably as an air base. During the Mexican revolution, biplanes from here surveyed the border and supposedly the first dog fight was two American contractors (one working for the US and the other for Mexico) shooting pistols at each other from biplanes.

Oldenburg nailed this one. The 400 steeds were accompanied by 650 soldiers -- and contributed about a half million dollars to the Marfa economy, helping the town survive the depression. Eventually the fort, once called Camp Albert, took the name of the Union General and Civil War hero David Allen Russell. Like Judd, Oldenburg, and Van Bruggen, he was a New Yorker.

Eventually the army closed down the fort -- but Marfa citizens donated 2400 acres so it could be reopened in 1935 as a training installation.Oldenburg and van Bruggen collaborated on more than 40 monumental public sculptures before her death last year ended their 30+ year marriage. The equestrian sculpture of "Louie" may be their least seen public work.

School No. 6 by Ilya Kabakov

Here we see an entire building that is to be treated as an integrated sculpture or "installation." It's by Ilya Kabakov who once made his living in the Soviet Union by illustrating children's books. Eventually he moved to Long Island but, in 2008, relocated to Moscow.With this 1993 gift to the foundation, he returns to his artistic roots, creating an abandoned Soviet Union era elementary school.

The sculpture/building depicts an abandoned Soviet elementary school which no longer indoctrinates children with the country's political and social values. (In Texas, our school board calls that "education.") The overall feeling both inside and out is one of decay and failure. This includes even the courtyard which seems to be losing its battle for respectability against the Chihuahuan desert.

Inside, where Kabakov could control the space, he has strewn the detritus of early education throughout the old barracks which he has lightly partitioned.

During Soviet years, Kabakov carefully navigated between the benefits of being an "official" artist and his private life where he created his own work. After the Soviet Union fell, he began to collaborate with his niece Emilia -- and not just in art. They eventually married.

A "propaganda" display. Portraits of Lenin still cling to the walls.

Abandoned school desks and book cases move the eye to poignant musical instruments.

Look closely: the floor is littered with paper. We were told to watch our step. How will future conservationists conserve artistic trash?

Named one of the ten greatest living artists in 2000 by ARTNEWS, Kabakov here practices conceptual art where the idea is all important and such things as aesthetics, materials, and even execution are secondary.

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Pula, Croatia

2010-03-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Pula, Croatia

Visited 23 October 2009

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At the Southern tip of Dalmatia's Istria Peninsula, Pula rises from a bay that has sheltered navies from the galleys of Byzantium to the dreadnoughts of the Austro-Hungary Empire. Today it sports impressive Roman ruins including perhaps Europe's best-preserved forum and the 6th largest surviving amphitheater. In letters home, James Joyce called it a "naval Siberia" while writing Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man from its sidewalk cafes.

Join us on our visit: While our prose is not up to Joyce's standards, our pictures are better.

We visited Pula on a wet late October day when Dalmatia's Bora (north) winds sporadically dumped rain upon us -- in between bursts of sunlight so intense that we left our umbrellas behind. A big mistake!

From the top

This picture (from Wikipedia) shows the magnificent natural shelter that explains why Pula became the main harbor for the Byzantium fleet in the 4th century.

Starting in 1856, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would moor its battleships here, making this its main port. Today a navy is still present -- but Croatian. At left we see the Castle built on the ancient Roman Capitolium site on one of Pula's seven hills. Around it, Roman engineers encircled Pula's walls in an oval shape. The oval to its right is the Coliseum.

Pula is about as far north as Minneapolis or Bordeaux, France, but its climate is delightfully Mediterranean; so much so that both the Austrian-Hungarian emperors and Tito built their summer homes on nearby islands.

Some consider this area the next Provence since its location and weather are similar (including an ugly winter mistral called "bora" here.) Lately, it's been getting attention for its cuisine including black and white truffles. Both Easyjet and Ryan Air have found the place as well. Once again, the barbarians invade.

Very ancient (pre)history

A million years before Tito, Homo erectus lived in caves found in Pula. Homo sapiens came here at least in Neolithic times, followed by several other cultures including the Greeks. These Greeks associate Pula's founding with the myth of Jason and the Argonauts.

Sprinkled with Roman establishments, the image above depicts the shield-shaped peninsula of Istria which extends into the Adriatic. (Today Croatia shares it with Italy and Slovenia.) Pula is at the bottom and, like the rest of the Istrian peninsula, was part of Italy after WWI until Mussolini fell in 1943 and Nazi Germany took over. The Allies then repeatedly bombed Pula's strategic port on its deep-watered bay.

Rome took control of the peninsula after conquering the native tribes in 177 BCE. Pula peaked at about 30,000 people under Julius Caesar around 45 BCE. Pula bet on the wrong horse during the civil war that followed Caesar's assassination. When Julius Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son/successor named Augustus eventually took power, he leveled Pula. (Shortly thereafter he started the Pax Romana which brought peace to the Mediterranean for 2 centuries.) Augustus's daughter convinced him to rebuild the city and it has featured some outstanding Roman architecture ever since.

The Amphitheater

Most significant of what the Romans left is Pula's great amphitheater. While not much remains inside at ground level, the walls still form a near-perfect oval and within are held film festivals.

After Rome fell, the Ostrogoths destroyed most of Pula but what they missed can be quite spectacular. The Ostrogoths were followed by the Slavs who pretty much wiped out the rest of Dalmatia -- but not so much in Pula.

The most recent threat to this arena -- one of the best preserved and 6th largest Roman amphitheater still standing -- came from the Italians when the fascist administration during WWII attempted to take it apart and move it to Italy much like the old London bridge got moved by a chainsaw zillionaire to Arizona. Fortunately the Italians abandoned their plan. (These are the people who want American museums to give back some of their Italian stuff! Apparently there isn't enough art in Italy already. Does Arizona have all it needs?)

Of the 200 extant Roman amphitheaters, Pula's is unique for having the stair towers intact. We see one of the four at far right in the picture above. These held wooden steps that helped the 23,000 spectators quickly exit from the arena. The limestone walls rise inside over 100 feet but are different heights on the outside as the land slopes vigorously here to the port. The sea side needs 3 stories, the other side only 2.

The ellipse is 435 feet long and 345 wide. Inside, like a Greek theater, the ground sloped to hold seats, eliminating the need for much of the interior stone construction found elsewhere. A set of canvas "sails" formed a roof to keep out sun and rain and probably drained into two cisterns on each stair tower. This water (after being perfumed) could then be sprinkled upon heated spectators.

Croatia's equivalent of the two-dollar-bill carries a picture of what the country considers to be its best preserved ancient monument. (This from a country that holds a cave where homo erectus lived 100,000 years ago.)

This lion is in no danger of being fed to a Christian -- although it's likely this arena saw human vs. beast action in the late 3rd century. Emperor Diocletian conducted the largest (and only empire-wide) persecution of the Christians around then. The Pope at the time was Caius. Both were from the same extended family in Split (Dalmatia)!

A generation after those two, Christianity became the official religion of Rome. With the resulting dearth of victims, gladiators began killing animals and each other. Eventually prisoners sentenced to death fought each other. (In concussion, I might add that I write these words on a Super bowl Sunday from a country which would never conduct such spectacle. Today's Saints are no longer martyrs.) After Augustus leveled Pula, an early arena was constructed of wood in 14 ACE. This was replaced by a successively enlarged stone building completed in 81 ACE. Given the space required, it was built outside the walls on the road that led (where else) to Rome.

But like a lot of us, the place barely survived the middle ages. Venice ran the town for 400 years and proposed moving the arena to Venice in 1583. (While the Renaissance awakened interest in Greece and Rome, could Venice -- where Titian had died seven years earlier -- have needed more art?) A Pula-born Venetian senator earned a plaque among these stones by quashing the plan.

But many stones did move -- the last being in 1709 to help build a belfry foundation we will see in a few more slides. Fortunately, Marshall Marmont whom Napoleon had tasked with governing Dalmatia, started a restoration which continued under the Austrians. Today, Pula's arena holds 5000 spectators who might lionize the likes of Pavarotti, Carreras, or Elton John -- or watch a movie, which, of course, would be called a "film."

A museum in the basement

Most surviving amphitheaters hold museums inside. Pula's Area basement specializes in ancient trade with huge displays of the freight containers of Rome's day, the amphorae. The walls discuss Rome's roads and sea lanes that moved these amphora through the Pax Romana area.

But the puzzler was this Roman view of cartography long before Western mapmakers pointed charts to the north and attempted to depict the shapes of landforms that astronauts would someday photograph from on high.

It's a copy of the 20-foot-wide Tabula Peutingeriana, the most famous itinerarium (Roman road map). Just about anything you see will be a copy based in part upon a 25-year effort by 3 Greek geographers that was carved in stone and placed near Rome's Pantheon around 44 BCE. This version is a copy of a 13th-century parchment reproduction made by a monk and hardly ever displayed by the Viennese museum that now protects it.

In this map, Rome is literally the center of its 5th century world. (North is left). The "wall" at center is the Apennines range that rise like an angry cat's backbone over Italy. At top is the Dalmatian coast with the Istrian Peninsula (and Pula) just to the right of center. Anyone thinking of Saul Steinberg's "View of the World Cover" for a 1976 New Yorker? Or maybe an old AAA TripTik?

Gated community

Let's leave the walls of the amphitheater and see a few more sites of this town. Given our short stay and frequent attacks from the rain, we were not able to see much more than the old Roman walls and forum.

After Caesar Augustus leveled the town, the Romans built it back up as the location was too strategic to ignore. They added an aqueduct and reservoirs, built roads, and encircled the place with walls. Pieces of these remain as we see here at the Hercules Gate.

The Romans buried their dead outside of their towns for sanitation reasons. This often led to series of elaborate tombs lining the roads just before the city gates as noble families kept up with the Jones in death every bit as much as they did in life.Here we see the remnants of a first century octagonal mausoleum along with (insert) a computerized reconstruction. Note the reverence for the site by the architect who constructed the building behind it.

Like most ancient habitation areas, graves are found here just about any time someone digs below the surface. An extension of the sewage system revealed many necropoli whose headstones were usually appropriated as building blocks for houses during the middle ages.

Except for a small run between two gates, the town walls were removed in the early 19th century. A few of the original ten (some say twelve) gates remain. Above is the Gemini (twins) gate done in a late 1st or early 2nd century style. Michelangelo visited and sketched it and some of the other Roman remains as he studied classical models.Pula had two Roman theaters and this gate may have served as the decorative entrance to one of them.

Another view of the Porta Gemina (twin gates)

Before Marshall Marmont and the French mandated the restoration of Pula (and much of the rest of the Roman buildings in Dalmatia), this is how the twin gates looked.

The remnants of the 2000-year-old wall link the Gemini gate with this Gate of Hercules, the oldest surviving Roman structure. Hercules was the town's patron; his badly eroded bust projects from the keystone of the entrance arch, barely visible at the top of this picture. Some also see Hercules symbol, clubs (the kind you hit people with, not the ones on playing cards) at the statue's left; but this takes a bit of touro-imagination.

The Hercules gate was protected by these typically circular Roman towers which appear here to be mortarless.The arch also contains a damaged inscription describing the founding of the city by a brother of Cassius who was one of the plotters against Julius Caesar. Based upon that text, historians date the founding of Pula between 47 and 44 BC. The Romans were on Dalmatia's Istrian peninsula over a century before that. This was probably when the place became Roman. Other humans had been here at least as early as the 10th century BCE. The Greeks trace the founding of Pula much earlier as part of the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

The Arch of the Sergii

By far the most elaborate "gate" is the triumphal arch probably erected around the time of the Battle of Actium (think Antony and Cleopatra.) This battle ended Rome's biggest civil war in 31 BCE - and its republic as well. Octavian won it, assumed the name Caesar Augustus, and then leveled Pula and other towns that sided with his opponents. After Augustus, there were only dictators, usually appointed by the army. (No Tea Parties here.)

This arch was built shortly after, around 28 BCE, to honor three brothers of a long running Pula dynasty called the Sergii. Their statues once stood on top. One of the brothers was a tribune at Actium. It was built just inside the Roman naval gate. The Sergii stayed in power in Pula at least into the 13th century as Genoa tried to seize control of their city which was then allied with Pisa.

The neo-classical Austrian architect Pietro Nobile redesigned the area around this arch in 1824 with the intent of making the arch stand alone. In so doing, the naval gate in front of it was removed -- leaving the Sergii Arch at the center of a new square which expanded to the old town walls by the end of the 19th century.Here we see the arch deteriorating with the arch stone at right moving away from the time-damaged Corinthian pillars at left.

Above we see some of the carved reliefs on the Sergii family arch. This monument was, in fact, an integral part of the town gate structure and led to the town Forum.

Pula's great harbor made it a natural place from which to try to dominate the Adriatic. The Sergii family led that effort during the Middle Ages. This, of course, put them and Pula in confrontation with that great city to the north: Venice. The Venetians did their best to bring the town under their hegemony, starting in 1145. With many revolts from the locals, it took until the 14th century before Venice established control once and for all -- until Napoleon wiped out Venetian rule in 1797.

During the centuries of Venetian control, Pula declined. Venice hurt but the plague devastated.

The Arch of the Sergii exemplifies late Hellenistic-Roman architecture. Why then do its spandrels sport apparently Christian angels? In fact, they represent a goddess called "Winged Victory." (Been to Paris? One of its greatest (but headless) Greek statues stands as one the three ladies of Paris's Louvre. Guys don't always notice that it's headless.) Goddess Victory is an appropriate memorial of the great battle of Actium, and of one of its local warriors (even though the town itself bet on the wrong side and was later leveled by the winner.)The Greek name for this goddess was "Nike" and yes, the arch-golfer Tiger Wood's many swoosh logos trace their lineage directly from her. The Romans named her "Victoria." Tiger has not been behaving in a Victorian manner lately; perhaps his role model was not the goddess Nike but rather the U.S. Army's early missile system named after her. Not all of us have evolved that far from the club-carrying homo erectus whose remains were found in a quarry 3 miles from here.

The artist as a young man

But some of us have: Near the arch sits this 2003 statue of James Joyce by Croatian sculptor Mate ÄŒvrljak. In his early twenties, the wily writer lived here briefly in 1904/5 at the home port of the Austro-Hungarian battleships awaiting that war to end all wars. He made his living at the local Berlitz School, teaching English to naval officers for about $3.25 per week.

Apparently he spent his off time (he only worked 16 hours a week) in a nearby outdoor cafe, soaking up the Dalmatian sun. On our visit, though, his statue glistened with the October rain. Joyce doesn't mention Pula in his work (he wrote much of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man here); but an earlier visitor, Dante, talks about Pula in the Divine Comedy, (back in the days when God had a sense of humor.)

Too highbrow? Try this: Georg Ludwig von Trapp was stationed here before his "Sound of Music" days. His father and other Trapps are buried here (but the hills are still alive). His sister was a painter and lived here as well.

Europe's best Forum?

While in most towns the old Roman Forum can only be conceptualized, enough remains in Pula to see traces in the wide plaza that abuts the port. Excellent multilingual signs such as the one above also help.

Here we see three 1st century ACE temples with the basilica extending to the right. These temples honor (left to right) Augustus (who tore the town down and built it back up), Hercules (patron of Pula), and Diana (not sure why). Note the Roman basilica stretching at an angle from her temple.

Here we see these temples. Augustus's at left is recognizable but the two at right have been incorporated into the town hall. (The two temples are more obvious from their backside as we'll see in a minute.) Despite such remodeling, this is still the best preserved forum in Croatia and one of the best in all of Europe. In Roman times, the masses stayed in the lower end while this literally upper end held the temples and the patricians.

Inside the gallery of the town hall incorporated into the two right temples, hang exterior decorative details -- old and new. Joyce failed to mention Pula in his literature (but derided it in his letters home as a "Naval Siberia"). But George Orwell's Big Brother would like this place.

Built between 2 BCE and 14 ACE, the temple that deified Caesar Augustus is the best preserved...

...although it could use a bit of restoration as its Corinthian columns have many chipped Acanthus leaves.

The back side of the town hall shows how Hercule's Capitolium and the Temple of Diana were merged into the town hall during the middle ages.

This is the east side view of the same building which shows, especially at right, faint traces of temple columns as well as at the upper right corner...

...this strange mermaid on the old temple of Diana, obviously pregnant yet carved to scale.

The cathedral

Just northwest of the forum is the cathedral with its bell tower, built between 1671 and 1707 with stones appropriated from the amphitheater. The cathedral's Renaissance facade is from the 16th century, meant to repair earlier damage from Genoese and Venetian raids. By then, Pula was safely within Venice's control.

Like many Mediterranea cathedrals, this is dedicated to the Assumption. Its predecessors started here, built into the defensive walls of the town as early as the 4th century. Stone transformations have been taking place ever since, with completion in 1924.

We couldn't go inside but did get this view of the courtyard. These columns look suspiciously like those that once graced one of Pula's beautiful Roman theaters. Perhaps robbing Augustus to pay Paul?

Early in church history, this peninsula had many bishoprics relative to its geographic size (8 in all). Historians view this as evidence that Istria's population was fairly large and fairly Catholic.

Meters

Again we end with a tourotip: Despite the effort Pula takes to care for its ancient ruins, it keeps state-of-the-art in some aspects of daily life. Here's an example: You pay for parking by calling with your cell phone. I'd assume that you already have a few things set up already such as your billing information. If not, you stuff coins into this kiosk.

Here the parking attendant checks the license against his wireless database. How civilized! Even better than the variable pricing for rest rooms (based on gender) that we saw in Split.

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Split, Croatia

2010-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Split, Croatia

Visited 18 and 20 October 2009

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Besides being the economic and cultural heart of the Dalmatian coast, Split is its transportation hub. This includes the modern freeway, railways, and as we see here with its scenic harbor -- the sea. The location of this busy port is a bit of an anomaly since a much larger and better protected harbor (and close to the fresh water of a river's mouth) lies only 4 miles to the north.

That location was perfect for the Romans who located the provincial capital of Dalmatia there and called it Salona. The Avar Slavs destroyed it (and just about everything else they could get their hands on) in 614 ACE. Residents fled to the islands -- and to a huge fortified palace that a powerful Emperor had built around 304 ACE. They've been squatting ever since, and the town around them expanded to become Croatia's largest coastal city with about 200,000 people. If we moved it directly west to North America, it would be north of Milwaukee and south of Toronto -- and everyone would complain about losing their Mediterranean climate and all those palm trees.

At the center of this topographical model we see the Jadro River draining into the Adriatic and moving past the old town of Salona, the Roman capital of their Dalmatian province. This was a major city with coliseum, temples, and all the other accoutrements of a Roman provincial capital. Below at #2 is the sheltered inlet where the Dalmatian-born Roman emperor Diocletian built his retirement fortress about 4 miles southwest of the capital. In 614 A.C.E., the Aver Slavs wiped out Salona and while much of its population retreated to the islands, many moved down to the old palace with its protective walls. The good news is that they never left -- and so the place still stands rather than having been turned into a recycling quarry for medieval buildings. The bad news is that they never left, and what's left of the palace is a mishmash of residences and cafes cluttering up what may be the world's most significant Roman residence still standing.

Here's Split's master builder: Diocletian is now consigned to the basement -- a location that survived intact only because it was filled with trash. He was probably the first to wear the gold crown and forbade anyone to wear purple except the emperor. A religious conservative, he promoted the idea that the emperor is a logical extension of the gods and claimed that he himself was a descendant of Jupiter, the alpha Roman God. Therefore it's no surprise that the Christians who eventually won out revile him. (Diocletian exacerbated the problem by conducting the only empire-wide persecution of Christians.)

Historians are more kind to Diocletian as his reforms probably extended the hegemony of the Western Roman empire for another century. When he arrived, the barbarians were at the gate and probably would have wiped out the empire. Instead, Diocletian reestablished order (which meant a return to the traditional gods, not those new ones of the upstart Christians.) He negotiated with Iran -- only to have them break the peace.Above is a medieval view of Split. The Venetians added the star-pointed fortifications when they dominated Dalmatia for 4 centuries. The nearly perfect rectangle on the right side is the house that Diocletian built. It held 10,000 people including his protective army. Well fortified, it protected the population who moved in after the Avars (a Slavic people) destroyed the important Roman city just north of here in 614 ACE. Diocletian built well; a succession of invaders through this area never penetrated the 6-foot-thick walls of his palace. What was the suburb became the city.

The old general Diocletian's rectangle resembled a Roman military camp (castellum) which was laid out precisely the same way. In camp, a soldier's tent was always in the same spot no matter where the battilion moved or what the terrain was. Diocletian's walls were high with a gallery at the top. Each wall had a gate at its center, including the sea gate at right. These gates led into two cross streets, again just like that of an army camp. Note that these grand avenues have colonnades on either side. The soldiers lived on the northern land half of the complex, and the emperor and his religious regalia on the sea side. The green designates the gardens which he loved. The projecting octagon is where he was laid to rest -- until the Christians took over and made it a cathedral honoring one of his prominent victims.This drawing was made in 1757 by an important architect we'll discuss in a few more slides.

Emperor Diocletian was the first to voluntarily retire. He did so after spending 10-15 years constructing the villa depicted as the trapezoid at the right -- about 8.5 acres in all. At left is the map of the "preserved" palace after 1400 years of being a town center. It's filled with hundreds of buildings added later, but this representation shows what's left of the original. Diocletian loved his retirement. When the Senate asked him to return to power as the empire was collapsing, he told them he preferred to stay here and grow cabbages with his own hands.This fortress-villa served as a prototype for Roman residences in the territories where Rome wrestled with invaders. Its DNA is that of a military fort (castrum) -- a rectangle further subdivided into fourths by two cross streets and protective walls, here about 6-8 feet thick. Except for the twin hexagons that protect each land gate, the towers were squares -- somewhat unusual as square towers were more easily destroyed by enemy assault weaponry.

Enough of the idealized models. Above is what we see from the sea in Split: It's tough at first to find the palace through the trees -- and drying laundry, ugly windows, etc. A closer look reveals columns embedded in the wall as well as one of the square corner towers. (Many of these today are being restored and leased to banks and restaurants.) Once you would arrive here by boat and enter through a beautiful marble gate, but this area was filled in to create a quay. Today it's nicknamed "the Riva" and is lined with restaurants and palm trees.Diocletian was from a humble Dalmatian family and his father may have been a slave. (Slavery was quite common along this coast up until the 13th century, and our English word "slave" is derived from the same root as "Slav.")

The Scottish architect Robert Adams made this drawing of what he called the "Crypto Porticus" along with the birds-eye-view we saw a bit earlier. As part of his education, he took the "grand tour" of Europe and stayed here for 5 weeks in 1757. Since this drawing, the arches have been bricked in with smaller window opening and taller buildings have been built behind this wall. (So thorough was Adams' work that the Venetian governor thought he was spying and nearly deported him.) At upper right is the sea gate (called the "Bronze Gate") where Roman galleys would deliver VIPs to visit the retired Emperor. Adams published his notebooks seven years later in a book that heavily influenced the classical architectural revival that would become the rage while the kings George ruled England. Adams himself became an important architect in his own right.

Some argue that Adams became the most important British architect of the 18th century. That's something for a man valued more for his remodeling of interiors than commissions for entire buildings. Above we see the first neo-classical project in London, started in 1768 by Adams and his 3 brothers (who like their father, were all architects). Adams appears to have borrowed the vaulted terrace on the water from the design he sketched in Split 11 years earlier. These 24 unified structures were called the Aldelphi Buildings and George Bernard Shaw lived in one of them and did write about architecture (and so much more). Since Shaw's day, the Adelphi complex has been Houstonized (which means they've been torn down in the name of progre$$.)

Adams' influence was immense; many of the Federalist buildings of our founding fathers were directly influenced by his theories. They viewed their new republic as following in the traditions of the republic of Rome and the Greek democracies. When you destroy the old, find an even older model and argue you are returning to that. What our founders borrowed from the appropriately named Adams, he, in turn, borrowed from his short visit to this palace. We are fortunate that Adams could extract the classic essence from walls corrupted by 14 centuries of daily life.Modern archeological excavations began here in 1954. Because of the difficulties of displacing residents who think they live in a city, not a museum, work is slow and it will probably be a long time before this best-preserved Roman palace is fully excavated -- if ever. Typically residents are lured from this palace by promising them modern apartments elsewhere with more creature comforts. (Who needs history when you can have a walk-in closet?)

Imagine, if you will, this colonnaded fortress. Its rectangular walls are crowned by the colonnade as we see here. Inside are two long cross streets which have elaborate colonnades on each side as we see at lower center through the east gate. After Diocletian's death, Roman nobles lived here and some of the northern buildings which would be to the right of this street -- and which had served as warehouses and barracks for the army -- became a textile factory to make uniforms for the Roman army.

Besides the sea gate, each wall had its land gate protected by hexagonal towers. Today the east side of the complex is the scene for a daily market. While the walls are generally still standing (but have typically lost the colonnade on the upper floor as we see here), their towers are long gone. We'd suspect that the stones migrated behind the walls and found themselves in some of the hundreds of buildings added after Diocletian died. Once siege armies figured out how to use assault cannons, such towers became useless for defense -- and fair game for recycling. Some of these towers have been restored (or even rebuilt) and are now occupied by banks and restaurants.The fact that an Emperor had to build walls around his provincial villa -- and provide barracks inside for a small army to protect him -- shows that by Diocletian's day, the empire was under assault from the invaders who would eventually destroy it in the West. After all, the provincial capital was only 4 miles away.

Here we are inside the complex looking back at the east gate we saw on the previous slide. This area is treated as living space as is evidenced by the grey hotel rising right inside the palace. Archeologists feel that they may never be able to excavate the entire palace due to the issues surrounding moving tenants who have been "squatting" here for at least 1400 years. Since 1968, the University of Minnesota under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institution has been assisting the Town Planning Institute of Dalmatia in conducting excavations. Think back to Diocletian's day when the broad east-west street would have a colonnade and porch on each side to protect from the elements.

The two main axes cross at a square called the peristyle that was converted to the cathedral square after the north and south gates were closed during the early middle ages. These elegant Corinthian colonnaded arches line each side of the two main streets providing a long gallery through the palace.

The peristyle was the public center of the palace, equivalent to the forum of a Roman town. Here Diocletian would make his public appearances. Behind the central open arch is the domed vestibule where visitors would be ushered into Diocletian's living quarters. If they came by land, they would enter through the elaborate North gate and directly approach this building after walking through the wide colonnaded street. To the left rose Diocletian's tomb (now the cathedral) and at right were three temples -- one of which survived as a baptistery.

Ignore the plywood and grime and, instead, put on your history glasses here to imagine your entrance from the North, stopping here at the front of the retired emperor's palace. Colonnades rise on either side as they might in a small town's forum. Each side once had its sphinx, brought here from Diocletian's campaign to quell an uprising in Egypt in the late 3rd century.In a way, this could symbolize today's historic Croatia. Classic jewels rising out of centuries of grime and dust -- and hoping to stimulate their economy through tourism. Visitors who love history can come here; those looking for sun will find only 100 yards from here the dazzling blue Adriatic trimmed with white beaches. A spot suitable for for an emperor should be good enough for a tourist.

Here's a detail of the pediment rising above Corinthian pillars. This is somewhat unusual as the entrance arch projects into it. The palace architects are unknown but may have been Greek since two Greek names are engraved within the walls -- and this structure has a classic Greek feel to it. Some might feel that's a bit ironic as this is an icon of Roman architecture. But Romans were always happy to pragmatize Greek ideals.

The vestibule contains a magnificent dome crowned by the open oculus which reminds travelers of the Pantheon in Rome.

This appears to have been originally covered by a cupola and the walls were long ago covered by mosaics, making this a quite elegant place to wait until the former emperor decided to grant you an audience.

As you might expect, this makes an ideal space for performances during festivals. At other times, a cappella groups perform here and sell their CDs to tourists. If you want to hear a sample, click on this link: http://www.dickschmitt.com/travels/Croatia/split/split/sample.mp3 . Dalmatia has a popular a cappella tradition called "Klapa." Although it seems a bit like traditional folk singing, it first appeared here in the 1960s. When the group is male, we get two tenors plus a baritone and bass. Quite pleasant although not what we think of as 60s music!

Here's traces of another Klapa group we found inside the palace walls -- and one of their biggest fans who got stuck in the 60s. . ("Klapa" is Croatian for "group of people. ") Maybe she too will be someday be remastered and rediscovered. This street scene is typical with narrow alleys separating centuries of added shops and residences.

Here we look north from the vestibule. At left we see the elegant colonnade with a baroque building filling in its arches. In Diocletian's day, to the left of those arches would be three temples whose purpose would be to argue that the tomb to the right contained a deified emperor. Long before the Gothic cathedrals, we had theology through architecture.

The construction that followed Roman rule provides its own set of challenges: would you tear down this building, peaking through Diocletian's colonnade, to restore the palace to its Roman roots? While this site is an outstanding Roman site, it contains medieval, renaissance, and baroque structures as well. As native Croatian architectural scholar (and one-time University of Texas professor) Ivan Zanic asks, what should be preserved?

Ready for another religious war in stone? This colonnade-enwrapped octagon at center is 1700 years old and was built as the emperor Diocletian's tomb. This most vilified Roman emperor's mausoleum still stands because it was converted to a cathedral honoring an early bishop Domnius (or Duje) who was martyred in the Roman's last great campaign to stamp out Christianity. It's known as the Diocletianic or Great Persecution since it happened on his watch at the beginning of the 4th century. This man who tried to further deify the emperor ended up on the wrong side of history; his successor and adopted son Constantine would make Christianity the state religion a generation later. But the boxcutters of the September 11 terrorists killed nearly as many Christians as did Diocletian's swords: around 3,000. In Diocletian's day, Christians numbered about 6 million, about 10% of the population. A lot of lions went to bed hungry.The bell tower was built much later.

Photographs were not allowed inside Diocletian's octagonal mausoleum (now the cathedral) but we found this old drawing showing its internals. Most of the double row of columns are originals. They support a frieze with reliefs of Eros and Diocletian and his wife Prisca.In the 7th century, Diocletian's remains were evicted and replaced by those of the Dalmatian bishop Domnius ("Duje" in Croatian). Not much has been replaced of the Roman structure but a few Christian elements have been added such as Romanesque 13th century choir stalls and a 1427 altar by Bonino of Milan (who visitors to these pages undoubtedly remember from his statue of Roland and Dominican decorations in Dubrovnik. (See those at: http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/DubrovnikCroatia#5417725368461623794 .)

Here we see a remnant of the Corinthian colonnade that lined the two intersecting thoroughfares along with the six-story Gothic bell tower added much later. Today this tower is the symbol of the city: a Christian tower refuting the emperor who inadvertently put Dalmatia's greatest city on the map as he failed to deify himself. Sic transit gloria imperatori!

Here are some of the details (and lightning rod) from the bell tower. This Romanesque structure was primarily built during the 12th-14th centuries when Split was an all-but-independent medieval commune. It was further remodeled at the beginning of the 20th century.

The mausoleum/cathedral is surrounded by its own octagonal colonnade. Tradition holds that during construction, this was a prison for the Christians whose Great Persecution started in 302 ACE. Diocletian retired and moved into his palace 3 years later. He began to use this tomb in 311 -- one of the very few Roman emperors in the 3rd and 4th century to die of natural causes -- and the first ever to retire. While he probably added a century to the lifespan of the Western Roman empire, his contributions allowed the eastern (Byzantine) empire to last a millennium after his entombment here.

In attempting to restore the traditional Roman gods -- and place himself in their sphere -- Diocletian built a colonnaded temple to Jupiter, the head of the Roman gods and one to whom he claimed a special affinity. Two other temples have been torn down here, but this survived by being baptized-- and baptizing others through total body immersion. At left is a headless sphinx.

Jupiter's statue has been replaced by this 1954 statue by Croatia's greatest sculpture, Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ‡, who spent his summers in Split before escaping to the new world.

The Baptistery ceiling is quite elegant. As emperor, Diocletian held that he was a descendant from Jupiter. (This from a man probably the son of a slave!) The palace symmetry with the deified emperor's tomb on the east side and the temple of Jupiter on the west would support his attempt to merge secular and religious authority.

The font is in the shape of the cross and is large enough for total immersion, a bit unusual in a Catholic church. The stone reliefs on its side date from the 12th century...

...and include a Croatian king on his throne with suitably supine supplicants...

...as well as this more abstract star with birds and flowers. These abstract reliefs were quite common along the Dalmatian coast during the middle ages.

One of the few areas that is free of residents is the basement -- which was a 1700 year old garbage dump until excavations removed the rubble. Their footprint suggests the layout of Diocletian's private apartments above which have been hopelessly partitioned.Today this space is often used for concerts

The basement area runs below the emperor's quarters.These stones are precisely cut and stacked; who needs mortar?

This southeastern section of the palace was one of the major focus areas when the Americans joined the effort in 1968. As later residences were demolished, some of the foundations for Diocletian's private apartment walls became evident. Still, much of the original layout is still unknown.

The basement contains many half and full domes showing much more humble building materials than the white marble of the palace above. Most of that marble came from nearby islands such as BraÄ and Trogir.

This brick arch still supports the palace above after 1700 years.

With so much additional building over the centuries (and so little signage), it's difficult to tell what was the original palace and what has been added.

This drawing shows that, to a large extent, the palace is now a set of walls with a few reasonably preserved monumental buildings. Most of the warehouses and barracks of the northern end have been replaced by a hodgepodge of small buildings, as has much of the south. In 1955, the palace had 540 buildings with houses accounting for about half of that number and housing about 3200 people.The dark areas show some of the restoration work, typically tearing down buildings and looking for Roman foundations, but at times building up towers long cannibalized for their building stones. Thanks to Dr. Ivan Zaknic for this drawing as well as much of the information about the Palace's restoration.

Work was added to this late Roman residential masterpiece from the early Medieval, Medieval,Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Nature has been embellishing the cracks as well.

This is probably the interior of the south wall showing the white BraÄian marble arches looking through to the sea -- interrupted by later stone and window work. Many Croatian tour guides brag that the marble from the United State's White House (perhaps now it can be renamed the "rainbow house") came from the Dalmatian islands. It didn't (although even the New York Times was fooled about that for a while.) However, the neo-classic architecture revival which gave that and many other federalist buildings their style came through Robert Adams from this villa in Split.

Common folk have been living inside the palace since the Slavs invaded. Today, the citizens of Split consider this to be a living city, not a museum. Despite being a UNESCO designated historic site, the city fathers decided to build a parking garage here a few years back. Fortunately, a public uproar stopped it early on.

The blight occasionally produces colorful bursts of daily life....

...that delight the photographer as much as they irritate the historian. Since most Croats are Christians, Diocletian's palace today probably holds as many Christians as he once martyred. And they don't mind airing their clean laundry in public.

Let's look at the palace's two other gates, starting with that on the west. Beyond this point, the medieval and Venetian town grew and finally Venice put a star-shaped barricade around the entire complex. Here, as at the east gate at the other end of this street, we see a square gate, capped by an arch, with a gallery above.

The west gate is the best preserved and is called the iron gate. (By now you realize that each gate is named after a metal.) The 15th century clock tower tells time in 24-hour increments. As the town expanded westward from the 16th century onwards, this became the most important gate into Diocletian's palace. The town administrative square that we will visit in a moment grew from here into the newer portion of the town.

Let's end our palace visit where it would have begun in Roman times as we would enter from land through the north gate. To impress visitors, this would be a magnificent entry, most probably bedecked by statues and bristling with soldiers and the trappings of empire. Unfortunately, it was walled in during the middle ages, severely restricting the flow along the palace's perpendicular axes. While recent restoration has reopened it, the stone work obviously needs further work. This Golden Gate greeted land visitors and ushered them down the north-south axis road called the Cardo to the vestibule, temples, and emperor's apartments. Once it was perhaps the grandest gate in Dalmatia.

Let's leave Diocletian's Palace now through the North Gate where, if we were Roman VIPs, we would have once entered the city. Because of the Ottoman threat in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Venetians built a large star-shaped barricade around both the palace and the newer town. Many years later when these were torn down, they provided room for the park we see at right. Just to the north of the palace wall, we see two strong vertical elements, the tallest of which is the tower of a now long-gone Benedictine Monastery. Before that at the left we see ...

...what I think is one of Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ‡'s most impressive sculptures. This depicts the 10th century bishop Gregory of Nin. Many of us think that Vatican II (with its theological rock stars named WojtyÅ‚a and Ratzinger ) brought the native language into the Roman Catholic church in that strange decade called the 1960s.

Long before in 926, Bishop Gregory battled popes to win the right for his fellow Croats worship in their own language -- and won. For a millenium before Vatican II, Croats prayed in Croat while the rest of the Roman Catholic world prayed in Latin. Ite, missa est!

This liturgical use of Croatian helped keep the country staunchly Catholic even while all sorts of other nations were running it -- and it helped keep alive Croatian language and culture.Commissioned in the late 1920s to commemorate Gregory's 1000 year anniversary, this statue started out in the Palace peristyle; but the Italians moved it outside during their WWII occupation. The toe is shiny from tourists kissing it. Doing so makes wishes come true. Better a bronze toe than a bachelor frog, perhaps.

Just west of the west (iron) gate we encounter the large civic square anchored by this 15th century town hall which combines flamboyant Gothic upper levels above Renaissance galleries -- not unlike the civic architecture in nearby Dubrovnik. (Please excuse the lens distortion here.)From 1924 through 2004, this building housed Split's Ethnographic Museum, a very important institution given Split's centrality to the Dalmatian coast and the number of objects moved here from the islands. (The museum has since moved inside the palace behind the vestibule.)

Here's another elegant building edging the People's Square. Such wide expanses are woefully absent within the adjacent palace where most space was devoted to one of the nearly 500 buildings erected after Diocletian's death.

About 200 yards to the west, we encounter Marmontova Street -- quite the pedestrian walkway with a bit of modern sculpture reminding us that we are in the 20th century.

Like the rest of the old town, this area has been completely pedestrianized. This part of the city is completely unlike the cramped palace, but it is also the work of a general. (Diocletian, of course, became emperor by being a very good general first.)

Marmont street leads to the sea and was the western boundary of the Venetian town. Wide and adorned with elegant residences, the street is named after the general who decided the town was safe enough to destroy the Venetian walls. Once removed, parks and esplanades such as this sprung up and opened Split to its glimmering seascape.This vision was that of Auguste FrÃ©dÃ©ric Louis Viesse de Marmont, Napoleon's aide-de-camp and most stalwart supporter/traitor. Dubrovnik invited the French to help defend their city against the Russian fleet -- but they stayed and Marmont became Duke of Ragusa. Viewed with disdain by the French, Marmont is well remembered in Dalmatia for being a good governor and for creating public works such as this street. (You may recall that about this time, Paris was tearing down its city walls and creating those lovely boulevards. "Boulevard," of course, is the French word for bastion.) With its lack of cars and sea views, Rue Marmont is easily as pleasant as most Parisian streets.

This sketch by the architect Robert Adams during his grand tour in 1764 looks to the west and shows the star-shaped Venetian defenses that Marshal Marmont would tear down a couple generations later. The bell tower here looks complete -- but is not as rectangular at the top as we see it today. The harbor was added on after the Jews, expelled from Spain in 1492, settled here and helped make Split the center of Dalmatian commerce.

Now back to Marmont Street where we find this 1903 Secessionist (=Croatian Art Nouveau) building by a local architect named Kamilo TonÄiÄ‡. It was built over a natural sulphur spring and is called the "Sulphur Spa."

Here's one of the upper decorations on TonÄiÄ‡'s building. Kamilo TonÄiÄ‡ went on to be an important Croatian industrial designer and brought such craftsmanship to manufactured articles for everyday use.This building alone might make TonÄiÄ‡' remembered in Split, but he made an even greater contribution by championing the founding of the Ethnographic Museum and serving as its director until 1944 -- including saving most of its contents from the Nazi occupation.

Walk down Marmont Street and turn right at the elegant fish market -- and you get to Republic Square.

Not without reason does this elegant neo-Renaissance square remind us of St. Mark's Square in Venice (without the crowds.) When Marshall Marmont tore down the Venetian defenses, he put a garden here-but at the turn of the 20th century, this square rose. That's a theater at the end and this large square is a scene for outdoor concerts in the summer.

Above the elegant arcades rise these lovely windows with their delicate reliefs including the Venice lions at top ...

... and this not so lovely functioning clothesline reminding us that, unlike Venice, this is a real town where 200,000 go about their daily lives -- while 4.5 million tourists storm through.

Let's conclude with this. I usually don't take a lot of restroom pictures, but this public facility offers separate prices based upon whether you stand (20 cents) vs. sit (80 cents.) Men like it but the women seem less enthused. Perhaps this is a best practice; but Split has a ways to go before its tourist infrastructure is commensurate with its Roman remains and economic importance to the Dalmatian coast. In 2006, only about 5% of the 4.5 million visitors here stayed overnight. Good places to stay are still hard to find even though the mayor is offering financial incentives to hotel builders.And now for something completely different: Did you know that Split with a population of only 200,000 people has produced (as of 2006) 67 Olympic medal winners, not to mention 2 Wimbledon champions? At these prices, no one here sits down very often.

Thanks for viewing. See all of our travel slides at: http://www.dickschmitt.com/travels.html .If you're into Roman military history, you may be interested in our discussion of one of the most significant forts of Hadrian's wall at http://www.dickschmitt.com/travels/England/hadrianswall/index.html .

Hvar, Croatia

2010-01-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

Hvar, Croatia

Visited 18 and 19 October 2009

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Hvar claims to be the sunniest spot in Europe and has been a tourist destination since 1886. Over 5,000 years ago, this was the site of the Hvar Culture. UNESCO calls the still-used fields a world heritage site for Greek agriculture.

This island is the longest Adriatic island at about 43 miles long. But it's thin -- averaging less than 7 miles wide. The Dinaric Alp mountain range that parallels and defines the Croatian coast lifts up an east-west limestone ridge out of the Adriatic.

Over thirty other empires have tried to run this thin limestone island that was once the southern Dinaric Alps mountain chain --before the Adriatic flooded its valleys.

The founding Greeks named this island FAPOS-- Pharos which to them meant a lighthouse. Slavs pronounce that "Hvar." (Croats write our "F" sound as "Hv.")

Let's start though a bit to the south. After our Dubrovnik visit, we ventured north along the Dalmatian coast. Views such as this are typical: communities hug the shores and over a 1000 islands, many of them inhabited, rise steeply from the Adriatic. Except for the southernmost islands and coast where Dubrovnik was able to hold its independence, the rest of Dalmatia became Venetian territory starting in the 12th century.

Long before that, crashing tectonic plates created most impressive ridges along the 400-mile-long Dinaric Alps as they laced the edge of the eastern Adriatic with craggy islands and shores. Natural barriers such as this have historically kept the area "Balkanized" into separate states not known for getting along. Bosnia in particular has trouble getting to the sea.

Here's one of the more dramatic views of these limestone ridges with a thumbnail of population below. Venice used these harbors to supply its ships -- with water, food, and oarsmen. Venetians discouraged education and culture. They mostly wanted supplies and muscle.Along most of the Dalmatian coast, these ridges parallel the Adriatic, keeping Bosnia on the other side from the sea only a few miles away. But here the fault shifts to provide some sea access where the Neretva River carves its way to the sea.

Limestone generally does a lousy job of holding water so lakes such as these are a rarity along the Dalmatian coast. Typically water corrodes the limestone, creating channels and drainage. Instead here it has formed 100-foot-deep reservoirs. These are the 7 interconnected BaÄ‡ina Lakes which border the coast at the city of PloÄe at the mouth of the Neretva River.The Dinaric Alps in the background are a nearly insurmountable barrier between the inland agricultural areas and the Adriatic. Besides this Neretva River valley, the only other pass through them is the Krka River canyon to the north. Bosnia would do a lot to get their hands on this territory and PloÄe's nearby port (where 95% of the population is Croat.) Negotiations continue.

Here we see an example of effective irrigation of the topsoil brought by the Neretva River to its delta.

But this view is more typical: forested mountains plunging steeply into the sea with perhaps a small town clinging near the edge -- and nary a field in sight.

Usually limestone meets shore without interruption. Occasionally you might see a small beach as is the case here. About 12,000 years ago, global warming led to the rise of the Adriatic which converted this area of the Dinaric Alps into islands -- long before Al Gore was invented.

Road building is taken seriously here and tunnels are not uncommon. This road led us from Dubrovnik to Split where we took a ferry to the island of Hvar, a hot destination for European beachcombers.

Hvar has a lot of history -- and a lot of prehistory. It has been populated at least since Neolithic times. Note the terrace farming here preserves the rain water that would otherwise quickly drain through the limestone karst in the valleys.The Dalmatian islands are typically parts of the Dinaric Alps whose gulches were filled in by the rising Adriatic sea about 12,000 years ago. Agricultural and herd animals arrived here, most likely from Italy, around 6000 BC. Typically with agriculture you get pots as you have to keep that grain somewhere. The late Neolithic Hvar culture flourished here for a millennium starting around 3500 BC. The Adriatic coast has over 50 archeological sites with fragments from their black pots. Hvar alone has 17 Neolithic archeological sites.

Here's another view of the terraces, some of which are UNESCO World Heritage sites as examples of Greek agriculture. Some have been in continuous use forever, if not longer. The island of Hvar is the longest Adriatic island at about 43 miles long. But it's thin -- averaging less than 7 miles wide. The Dinaric Alp mountain range that parallels and defines the Croatian coast lifts up an east-west limestone ridge out of the Adriatic. Terrace farming is important to preserve the rainwater (about 27" per year -- not all that different from the US Midwest area). But scarce fresh water disappears quickly through the porous limestone. The soil is not suitable for raising grain, but works well with vines and, as we see at the bottom of this picture, olive trees...

...but often lavender makes for a more lucrative crop although it takes some tending. While Napoleon was in the neighborhood, the lavender crop mushroomed to serve the French appetite for perfume. Much of this area has an abandoned feel to it, and typically the lavender terraces seem a bit scruffy. (Since the Venetians brought vines in the 12th century, wine was also an important export but, as in France, the phylloxera critters wiped out the industry and many of the island's agricultural workers left. The slopes and sun -- along with strong winds that keep insects at bay -- make this excellent wine country and Hvar's wine industry has made a strong comeback. (Croatian and Hungarian wines -- dismissed for years as Eastern Block schlock-- are suddenly in vogue.) But sometimes the winds (named "Bura" for the North and "Yugo" for the south) are so strong that those who labor in the vineyards must be tied together with ropes.

Out of the over 1000 Dalmatian islands, Hvar is unusual for having both fresh water springs and large coastal plains. No surprise then that this isle was inhabited early, maybe even before it became an island about 12,000 years ago. Once people started to settle down with agriculture, they needed a place to stay.Besides inventing the wheel, Neolithic man figured out how to stack stones to create shelters with roofs and sides that repel water. Like the wheel, it was obvious how to do it in hindsight. Like wheels, these "trims" are typically round to avoid issues like corners, (although that's not apparent from this picture.) Today these mortar-less structures look like so many stone igloos dotting Hvar's ancient stone-walled terraces. If you're into this kind of stuff, try this excellent link by Zagreb theoretical physicist Berislav HorvatiÄ‡ who appears to be both a rock and a rocket scientist : http://hvar05.ifs.hr/gallery/Horvatic/index.html .

Preservationists are a bit incensed that an airport has been proposed for part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of agricultural fields terraced by rock fences from Greek times. Throughout the island, we witnessed further rock construction in progress.The Greeks arrive in 385/4 BC, bringing the local indigenous tribes into history (writing) and a market economy. The Greek colonization of the East Adriatic was not particularly intensive; but two centuries later, this island was well positioned as part of the Roman Empire which saw free movement of people and goods along the entire Mediterranean and along the Atlantic from Africa to Scotland.

Some Hvar residents still work in marble quarries. (Several guides informed us that the US White House was made from stone from Hvar but when the New York Times published that factoid on the front page of its travel section a few years ago, historians corrected the paper of record. But guides here are not about to abandon the story. Weapons of mass destruction, anyone?) At the north end of the island is Grabak Cave, a major Neolithic archeological site which once held many pottery fragments, knives, copper tools, and human and animal bones -- most of which are now a ferry ride away in a museum in the mainland city of Split. Descendants of this cave continued to be the majority of the inhabitants of Hvar island long after the Greeks arrived. Most archeological sites in Hvar are in caves -- not that all of the Neolithic tribes lived there. It's just that those on the plains most likely had their remnants wiped by the elements (remember those winds?)

Is it any wonder that the Greeks had to terrace to keep the rainwater from escaping through the limestone karst?

Conde Nast Traveler calls Hvar a 3-S tourist destination: Sun, Shore, and Sex. Instead we found here a 2-S site: Stari Grad and a lot of Stones just like the nearby stone-fenced Stari Grad Plain, the UNESCO agricultural site. Unfortunately, the Stari Grad ruins were the biggest disappointment of the trip, as only a few undocumented piles of stones mark the archeological site. Come to think of it, the sun and shore weren't all that great either, in my humble eStimation.A long bay on the north side of the island creates an excellent natural harbor leading to this spot. Greeks from Syracuse (Sicily) started a colony here called Pharos in the 4th century BC, making this one of the oldest civilized spots in Europe. When it founded its colony of Î¦Î±ÏÎ¿Ï‚, Syracuse was probably the most important Greek city on the Mediterranean and at the peak of its power. War with Carthage would soon follow. Eventually the Greeks invited the Romans into Dalmatia to help them maintain their power. Not that good of an idea.

Invite is a bit of a misnomer as this island resisted the 219 BC onslaught of the Romans and were punished severely for it. (This was typical for the Romans.) Over the next 600 years, Romans pretty well controlled their province of Dalmatia -- but only in the cities and towns. The countryside remained native and tribal. Here, as in the rest of Croatia, the southern Slavs eventually swarmed in. When Venice finally got control, it moved the capital from Pharos (now called "Stari Grad" ) to the southwestern side of this thin island. Above is the 17th century church of St. Stephen whose facade, like that of many churches throughout Dalmatia, dimly echoes that of the resplendent St. Zaccaria in Venice.

St. Stephen's was locked up, leaving us to admire this doorway with a pope memorialized between two half shells overhead. This depicts Pope St. Stephen -- not the martyr we usually see depicted sprouting arrows like a porcupine. Instead, this Stephen was the 3rd century Pope who invented mass vestments. (Before that priest wore street clothes. While this may not be world peace, it has endured much longer: Today Stephen's sole brother Benedict XVI wears Prada loafers.) This church replaced a 12th century church on the same spot -- and used stones from the city's defensive walls. The Venetians constructed the first church of St. Stephen as part of a Benedictine monastery.

Here's one of the few windows that breaks St. Stephan's ashlar wall. Construction started in 1604 and continued for over a century. The Venetians fought with the Byzantine empire, Hungary, and Croatia from the 12th century until 1409 when they more-or-less settled the matter. In fact, when Venice began to dominate the Dalmatian coast, these islands in the center of the then-known world had had over 30 changes of control including Greeks, Romans, Tatars, Croats, Serbia, and the Byzantine Empire. Nice of the Greeks to introduce history here, but it's hard to keep up with it all.For nearly 4 centuries under Venetian rule, the island prospered economically, even if it occasionally rebelled politically. The Hapsburgs ended the Venetian Republic in 1797 followed a decade later by Napoleon and his crew. Then came the dogs breakfast of rulers that ended in Yugoslavia. Except, of course, it didn't end in Yugoslavia. Today the island is back as part of Croatia.

The old town ("Stari Grad") is filled with stone houses which we found mostly closed-up in the rain -- despite the fact that the tourist office claims this to be the sunniest spot in Europe. (It averages over 7 hours per day.) This island supports itself by producing excellent red and white wines, lavender -- and, of course, tourism.

Although an island, Hvar was often at the center of culture such as the Croatian literary Renaissance. One of its major figures is Petar HektoroviÄ‡ whose statue rises in front of his imposing stone house he designed facing the port in Stari Grad. Today it's an ethnographic museum.The Croatian literary renaissance was a 15th and 16th century movement that saw Croat writers who had been using Latin --HektoroviÄ‡ had translated Ovid -- begin to write using their native tongue. Their subject matter included contemporary life, local folk lore, and common people.

HektoroviÄ‡ was such a noble whose poetry glorified the common man. He was born and died in Stari Grad, where he built this fortified house around 1520, calling it "Tvrdalj Castle." (His family was among the wealthiest here and he had a much different summer home in Hvar town that we will see in a few slides.) The pond contains sea water as is often the case in coastal gardens where fresh water is in short supply. It flows under the "fort" to an interior atrium and garden. HektoroviÄ‡ wrote in both Latin and Italian, but his masterpiece was in the local Croatian dialect, describing a fishing trip around the island. This in the seas where wily Ulysses sailed. HektoroviÄ‡ did eclogues, not epics.

Let's now leave the old town of Stari Grad and venture to the southeast section of the island to the town of Hvar. The long quay reaching out into the harbor at the center of the picture was built by the Venetians to moor their fleet. At upper right are some of the 20 Pakleni Islets, where forests meet beach and those with boats or water taxi can experience both. The name is mistakenly thought to translate as "Hell's Islands," and some is raised there. In 385 BC, the Greeks also settled here in a town they named "Dimos." Most likely this was a trade center between such great Greek cities as Corinth and the interior of Bosnia-Herzegovina. With the arrival of the Greeks, the natives, perhaps descendant from the cave dwellers, retreated to the hills in the island's interior. To keep them there, the Greeks built walls. (Traces exist today but scholars dispute whether the natives built these earlier to keep the Greeks out. Myth holds that these walls were built by giants such as Odysseus's Cyclops.)

The local tribes of Illyrians eventually took the island back from the Greeks but held it for less than a generation before the Romans took over in 219. They came to stamp out the pirates based here that were menacing Adriatic shipping. They created villas with mosaic floors that are still being excavated today. When the Western Roman empire collapsed, the eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire took over in 535 -- but local bishops kept Dalmatia Catholic, not Orthodox. Dubrovnik (Ragusa) dominated the islandByzantine rule never quite took, especially after the Slavs swept through the Neretva river valley (remember those lakes we saw earlier) and populated Dalmatia during the 7th century. They stayed while Byzantine kept conquering and losing the same territory. Finally Croatia became a vassal of Hungary (but administratively somewhat independent) in 1102.Then came Venice.

Hvar willingly gave itself over to Venice in the 12th century in exchange for protection. When the Venetians took over in 1278, they moved the island capital here in what is now the town of Hvar. Three hills descend to a lovely harbor which laps the town square. While hovercraft land here, this appears today to be more a marina than port. The island's major port has stayed on the other side of the island at Stari Grad. In the summer, this basin is pretty much a parking lot for 3-S yachts as this is Croatia's most in sin resort.

The Venetians moved the capital here as it was easier to defend than Stari Grad. If you come by road, this is what Hvar town looks like on first sighting -- the Spanish fort and a piece of the crenellated town wall erected by the Venetians. The town was allowed to govern itself within these walls.

Walls protected the town on the land side. To protect the sea entrance, the Venetians constructed an arsenal to support both the city's defense as well as shipbuilding. The building at right is a newer arsenal built from 1579-1611 after the invading Turks burnt down its predecessor. Its huge arched entrance allowed ships to be taken inside in times of danger. (The Turks burnt down almost all of the town in 1571 as they rowed their way to their defeat at the Battle of Lepanto. Their commander, Uluz Ali -- the governor of Algiers -- brought 80 galleys here as a diversionary tactic. He sailed around Hvar island, trashing all its cities before proceeding south to Corfu.) Later one of the oldest surviving theaters in Europe was built inside the Arsenal in 1612. Called the Kazaliste, it further solidified Hvar as a center of the Croatian Renaissance with the homes of Hanibal Lucic, Petar Hektorvic, and Gian Francesco Biondi. The town square at left leads to the cathedral and its iconic Dalmatian bell tower.

Here's the main reason that Venice wanted Hvar. While their galleys were great ships for getting into and out of military situations and tight harbors, including the Venice Lagoon, they were labor intensive -- which meant water intensive as that labor sweated in the Mediterranean heat. When not at war, these ships transported cargo so safely that they routinely "sailed" without insurance. Speed required that they be long: eight times as long as they were wide. That meant they would tip easily if loaded with cannons high enough to do damage. Because of that, they eventually became obsolete. Most used three banks of oars on each side powered by rowers on benches angled so seat mates wouldn't interfere with each other. Oars -- one per rower --weighed about 120 pounds each and were rarely operated by slaves. Typically there was enough room at the end of each bench for a single bowman/marine.(Thanks to Frederic Chapin Lane's "Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance" for this drawing.)

At the other end of the island, the Venetians fortified their churches. But they couldn't hold the island and Hungary-Croatia took the island back in 1358, followed by Bosnia -- which was eventually defeated by the Ottomans in 1389. But the Ottomans couldn't hold Dalmatia and finally the Venetians got Hvar back despite Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and Split both fighting for it.But even Venice's hold was tentative and they erected the Spanish Fort between 1531 and 1551, 358 feet above the town, in anticipation of an attack by the Ottoman Turks. (They arrived 20 years later). But not all enemies were from beyond the island shores. Hvar denizens revolted against their Venetian masters several times.

When Venice fell to Napoleon in 1797, he gave Dalmatia to the Austrians who built their barracks inside this castle. When Austria, in turn fell after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, the French took Hvar back. This in turn brought out the Russians who bombarded the island a few years later.A pleasant walk through aloe and scrub bush leads to this fort built by Spanish engineers during the 16th century and called the Spanish Fort ever since. (Spain has spent the centuries before mostly attacking the Moors in a successful attempt to get them out of Andalusia.) Hvar residents survived the Ottoman onslaught in 1571 by taking refuge here. Before this fort, a medieval castle occupied this obviously strategic high ground.Our luck was not as good. We found the fort closed due to high winds -- but not so high that we couldn't easily walk up here on a sunny mid-October afternoon. Fortunately, no Ottoman Turks were to be found.

With Hvar, the Venetians had safe harbor halfway between Venice and Corfu. Galleys stored little food and water and navigation in open water was rare. Ships clung to the shore. Hvar was well positioned to supply the 2 gallons of water needed per day for Venetian galleys that held over 200 sailors/rowers. Venice also built the tiny enclosed marina at the foot of the plaza at left which today is still called Mandrac (Greek for a sheepfold.) The town prospered and nobles built their Gothic and Renaissance palaces right into the city walls. Venice used this as one of their naval bases until 1776.

The Arsenal is at center left of this picture. The Venetians moored their Adriatic fleet here along the long quay where today the glitterati moor their yachts.

Besides being the sunniest spot in Europe, Hvar is known for the Venetian Renaissance buildings edging its main square. Here we look north at the loggia and clocktower of the Rector's palace (equivalent to city hall) at the bottom of the hill protected by the Spanish Fort. These remnants are now part of a hotel once favored by Elisabeth, Empress to Franz Joseph, during the 1800s. The Habsburgs ran Dalmatia from 1815 until Austria-Hungary's collapse at the end of WWI. They are the ones who started the Hygiene Society of Hvar where sick folks could recover in the town that had more sunshine than any other in Europe. Venice called the island "Lesina" -- a word that described pine and oak forests that perhaps covered the island in their day. For the most part, these seem to have been replaced by scrubby brush.

This palace was built in Venetian Renaissance style. In the 19th century, the Austrians destroyed all but this loggia. We'd guess that the lions of St. Marks -- symbols of Venice -- were restored sometime after they left.

The loggia is now one of the fanciest Florida Rooms in the world and serves as a reception area for a hotel. The original palace was destroyed when the Ottomans visited in the 16th century. It looks over a small marina between the square and the harbor.

This was once a fortified governmental complex of five buildings but only the loggia and the 15th century clock tower remain. After the Turks left, Croat mason Trifun BokaniÄ‡ rebuilt the palace. He lived on the island of BraÄ, just north of Hvar.Supposedly the empty flagpole at left was called the "Pillar of Shame" back in the middle ages when we had some. If you messed up, you were tied here while people spit on you. In Europe now, Hvar has sort of a Florida spring break reputation and water taxis will take you and your cooler to nude beaches near by. We didn't see anyone spit while we were here.

This side view of the Rector's palace shows the path through the city walls and a palace originally built right in the city's walls now being reconstructed. This arch was the main town gate and was called the Porta del Datolo because even then (as now) it has palm trees planted in front of it. Beyond this arch, the pedestrianized street rises to the Spanish fort.

This palace was intended to be the summer home of the family of Croatian Renaissance poet Petar HektoroviÄ‡. (Remember that heavy fortress we saw earlier in the old town of Stari Grad)? His roofless residence has a much lighter feel with perhaps the finest Venetian Gothic windows in Hvar. Work stopped at HektoroviÄ‡'s death four centuries ago-- and never started back up! Like many noble palaces here, it's built right into the defensive walls of Hvar.Perhaps it was unfinished because another noble built the building we see at left between HektoroviÄ‡'s house and the harbor, ruining his view. The family was the PaladiniÄ‡s and the resulting case lingered in the courts. This was their summer home, kitty-corner from their winter home. Apparently the wealthy had two homes close to each other with better ventilation needed for the hot summers. Without a roof, the HektoroviÄ‡ summer home is superbly ventilated.It is somewhat amazing that its walls have held up so long without a roof.

This view of the north side of Hvar's harbor shows an orphan church tower, most likely the work of Tripun BokaniÄ‡ who rebuilt the Rector's palace. The French abolished its monastery in 1807.

Beyond the Rector's loggia starts the largest square on the Adriatic except for St. Mark's square in Venice. Second largest is a long way from the magnificence of St. Mark's but Hvar's square is quite pleasant and relatively empty while we were there. Trendy bars and restaurants stick awnings out from the rather simple structures that edge the square.

Another view of St. Stephen's Square and named after its cathedral which was rebuilt starting in 1560. It incorporates sections of the Benedictine church that preceded it. At the left of the bell tower is the bishop's palace, now a museum.Even though Hvar was under Venice's thumb, in 1610 it agreed to give commoners equal political standing with the nobles -- a pretty radical idea for its time (and are we sure we have it today?) Contrast this with the "independent" republic of Dubrovnik nearby which required officeholders to be nobles.

This square was created in 1780 by filling in a marshy bay after creating a cistern to hold rain water and paving it with stones. The stored rainwater was then accessed through the ornate fountain at right. By then, Venice had moved its fleet and the town would languish until a century later when it became a tourist center.

Here the cistern cover frames the tourists idling in St. Stephen square. Nearby excavations show traces of a town from around the 5th century BC.

Supposedly this water collection system still served the town until 21 years ago when a modern water system was installed. Still this 1520 font is much more elegant than a bunch of pipes.

In this Venetian town, the tri-font cathedral facade resembles that of St. Zaccaria in Venice (as did the church of St. Stephen in Stari Grad.) The nearby island of KorÄula provided many of the mason/architects for Hvar's monuments. That was the case here: the facade was worked on by Nikola KarliÄ‡ in 1541 -- followed by his fellow islander Ivan PomeniÄ‡ nearly a century later. With its tower, the facade makes the exterior the quintessential Dalmatian church.

Here are some of the details of Nikola KarliÄ‡ and Ivan PomeniÄ‡'s facade. The statue is most likely of the cathedral's namesake, Pope Stephen, a saint from the 3rd century whose fashion contributions we discussed on the old cathedral in Stari Grad.

The cathedral bell tower was completed in 1532 (before the facade.) It echoes the prototype built 25 years earlier by the Franciscan monastery across the bay. (Why do you need a lightning rod in Europe's sunniest spot? In case God's aim is off the mark when he strikes at the sybaritic 3-S tourists.)

Priestly vestments, gold crosiers, and other treasures are kept next door to the church in a museum made from the bishop's palace.

Let's go through the low relief bronze doors to see the interior of St. Stephen Cathedral. These are the work of Kuzma KovaÄiÄ‡ who was born in Hvar, in 1952. Many of the scenes appear to be of the life of the saint who would eventually become Pope Stephen, whom this church honors. (Most of us were inadvertently familiar with KovaÄiÄ‡'s work as we had Croatian kuna coins in our pockets with his initials "KK" on them -- and had used them to get a little low relief ourselves in some of the pay toilets in Dubrovnik.)

Somewhat small for a cathedral, St. Stephan's has a Venetian baroque interior with its nave and two aisles. This was built in stages during the 16th and 17th centuries on the foundations of a monastery. The pulpit is from the 15th century.

The side aisles create smaller but open chapel spaces including one with the family tomb of the writer HektoroviÄ‡'s family. The side altars are typical Baroque assemblages of inlaid marble beneath oil paintings framed in multi-colored marble Corinthian columns. Most paintings are by Venetians and 8 of the 10 altars here are 17th century products of the workshop of Alessandro and Paolo Tremignon who are perhaps best known for their Palazzo Labia in Venice. Above, the angel in the painting holds another framed oil of Christ being laid in the sepulcher.

The wooden choir stalls are from 1572 (the year after the Ottoman Turks came by) and suggest that the cathedral canon was fairly small. These are the work of Venetian Marko Anto and were restored in 1888.

This stonework rising above a relief of the apostles may have been from an earlier cathedral. At top is a Passion scene of the flagellation of Christ which is by (or at least in the style) of an important Croat sculptor Giorgio da Sebenico best known for his masterpiece: the cathedral at Å ibenik.

Above is a replica of a medieval baptismal font dating from the 9th century. This high hexagon is decorated by braided reliefs typical of Croatian wattle or "pleter." The braided cross is called the Croatian Cross and dates as a symbol over 1000 years. The original is in the archeological museum at Split.

Next to the baptismal fount along the marble sanctuary railing, in ironic juxtaposition, we find modern sound equipment that could use a little braiding or some other organization. It demonstrates that Hvar Culture now includes modern liturgical singing.

Let's look at some of the typical streets of Hvar including the Tex-Mex restaurant advertising here. These steps climb up to the Spanish fort. Most of the town has been pedestrianized.

Some ways of making money from the tourist trade are ingenious. Above is the flower of the Aloe plant the leaves of which produces a spidery sap that can be spun into thin threads...

...that nuns in this simple convent weave into incredibly detailed lace and sell to passers-by. (Photos inside were not allowed.) European lace making has been going on since the Renaissance -- often by nuns and noble women. Hvar's Benedictine convent is the only site for aloe based lace which UNESCO characterizes as part of Croatia's "intangible cultural heritage" in an obvious attempt at saving lace. Aloe lace making started in the mid 19th century. If you'd like to see more, check out the Croatian Ethnographic Museum's excellent 10-minute video on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuMHTNeUDrI .

The nuns forbid pictures inside their convent but I found this one on the web, taken by a fellow Picasaweb user named Cory who was in Hvar the week before us. (Not much other information is given). Despite UNESCO's best intentions, this may be a dying art. All postulants at the convent are required to learn the craft but it's not clear there is any other strategy to transfer the knowledge of this craft. Given how few nuns there are in the world, should they be making lace for tourists?

Let's walk through parts of the old town -- filled with medieval, Renaissance and Baroque mansions. Venice's winged lion makes frequent appearances in this town that it ruled for many centuries. Here he looks rather ugly but not as ugly as...

This juxtaposition of an old iron "X" bar to help the building survive earthquakes next to an air conditioner.

Most of the older homes project beams to support balconies and window ledges which may have disappeared. Door decorations such as these are not uncommon.

These stations of the cross lead out from the St Francis Monastery (now a museum). These were built by the commander of Venice's Adriatic fleet which was stationed in Hvar for centuries. Today these are scrupulously maintained and integrated into the streetscape in this nation where 88% of the population are Roman Catholic -- and unlike in Italy across the Adriatic, most of these practice. Religion was often the glue to hold the sense of nation together while 30 different foreign powers tried to rule this island. As we see from its Roman numeral...

...this is the 12th station containing what appears to be a modern bronze depiction of the crucifixion. The station houses are much older, being built in 1720.

Backtracking through the stations of the cross, we arrive at its origin: the former Franciscan monastery. Built from 1461-1471, this served as a hospice for sailors funded by the captain of the Venetian fleet. It's outside the old town walls but on the harbor. (It got its own walls in 1574 but that didn't keep the Ottomans from doing their mischief in 1571.

Marko AndrijiÄ‡bell from the nearby island of KorÄula started (and his brother finished) the monastery's bell tower around 1500. It serves as a prototype for many Dalmatian towers and it is not by accident that the Cathedral tower built 25 years later on the other side of the harbor resembles it. Only two monks live here now. The monastery is a museum today -- not just because of what it holds, but because of what the architects included in the construction.

A modern bronze of Francis prays without birds in the outer garden, perhaps a work of the great Croatian-American artist Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ‡. This reflects the poverty promulgated by Francis...

...better than this much older lunette ...

...which, nevertheless, is quite lovely and well maintained except for the fuzzy angel on the right. Check the foliage below it. This monastery was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.This is a copy of the 1470 original by Nicholas of Florence which has been moved to Zagreb. Nicholas was a student of the great early Renaissance sculptor Donatello -- who pioneered this shallow relief sculpture (bas-relief) technique we see deployed here.

Its 15th century cloister is quite somber --check the decorated well at lower right and the sundial above. One of the two monks living here is the sculptor Jaokim Gregof who works in bronze. Are you wondering if those stations of the cross that lead to this site are his? Or maybe that MeÅ¡troviÄ‡-ish sculpture of St. Francis?The courtyard is used for concerts in the summer and we found it bristling with white plastic chairs.

Inside the church we have a graphic novel's worth of icons including the scenes from the Passion at top. These twin altars frame the doorway where the larger outer chapel enters an inner chapel and serve, more or less, as a choir screen to separate the nave from the sanctuary area. Both these altar pieces and that showing in the inner chapel are by Francesco Rizzo Da Santacroce who did much work in Bergamo and Venice.

Here's a twisted view of what we had to settle for before the invention of Powerpoint. These Passion scenes line the top of the chapel in their Baroque frame. This is the 1607 work of Martin BenetoviÄ‡, a native of Hvar -- a town we were beginning to think had a lot of sculptors and writers, but not many painters.

The inner chapel has this elegant communion rail and leads to the tomb of an important Croatian Renaissance poet and playwright, Hanibal LuciÄ‡ who died in 1553, about the time this church was built. He lived his entire life in Hvar -- and burnt most of his work. His son was able to save a bit of his work and publish it, including the first South Slav secular play.

MeÅ¡troviÄ‡ would probably appreciate this sculpture but the museum seems content to leave it sitting on the floor, at least for now.

Tourists love the old dining room. Like any good monks' refectory, it has its mural of the Last Supper, this one about 25 feet wide.

Not a fresco, this appears to be a set of canvass panels, some of them reasonably well restored. There is some debate as to the identity of the painter although many scholars think it's heavily influenced by the Venetian Palma Giovane who died in 1628. Palma did several religious works in Croatia including an 8-paneled altar painting in Hvar. Our guide thought that this was done by a local since it was unsigned. Venetians working here typically would sign their paintings.

The refectory leads to a small garden facing the harbor. It features this 400-year-old cypress with strips of red in its bark (which are not all that apparent in this picture.) A local story holds that the painting of the Last Supper was done by Matej Ponzoni-PonÄun who planted this tree at the same time.

A parting thought: Unlike that Venetian city with a large plaza on the water, this is a real town with real kids herded by their teachers. (At least these didn't look like a tour group.) Although much of the Hvar economy is now somewhat tourist driven, the 11,000 people who live here also produce red and white wines that many consider to be Croatia's best; commercial fishing employs many as well.The local tourist industry brags that it started in 1886 when the Austria-Hungary empire decided to advertise this location as a health resort. In fact, its roots are much older. During the middle ages, most European pilgrims to the Holy Land started in Venice whose galleys would take them along the shore for provisions and lodging. Hvar was clearly on the way.

Thanks for visiting this sunny but chilly island with us.

Visit our other travel pictures at: http://http:\\www.dickschmitt.com/travels.html .

Dubrovnik, Croatia

2010-01-15T21:17:00.000-08:00

Dalmatia's Pearl

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visited 16 and 17 October 2009

(Click on any picture to see it enlarged)

See our other Dubrovnik pictures by clicking here -- or see this information as a traditional web page by clicking here.

Dubrovnik is about as south as you can go and still be in Croatia. The country is very thin here, separated from the rest of Europe and Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Dinaric Alps which rise dramatically from the Adriatic. Long a small but leading trading city-state of its own, Dubrovnik is sheltered from the ugly winds of the Adriatic by mountains and islands, giving it a pleasant Mediterranean climate (or so the tourist office says -- we experienced a lot of October rain here).

We landed in Dubrovnik after being told that we might have needed to divert to Split (many hours away) because of high winds. This was no idle threat, as the US Secretary of Commerce and his entourage had died in a crash while landing here. (OK, the Serbs had stolen a lot of the airport's navigation gear, but that's another story.) The red on this map shows the once independent republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) which ceded sea access to the Ottoman Bosnia province -- and cut Dubrovnik's area (shown in red) off by land from the Venetians encroaching down the Dalmatian coast. (The rest of Croatia is shown in gray.)This tiny republic was pretty close to most Mediterranean trade routes -- and bullies. It stayed independent for four centuries by playing Slavs, Ottoman, and Venetians off against each other through skilled negotiation, tribute, and bribes.

Dubrovnik has been through a lot but thanks to the tourist trade, the city makes sure it looks a lot like this old picture hanging in the Franciscan Monastery. Today we still visit a superbly restored walled town (although the harbor fortifications have been lowered at right.) Cutting horizontally across the middle of this picture between two towers is a wide street moving towards the port. Once what was above it was mainland and below was the island where the Romans sheltered their colony. In the 12th century, the marsh between was filled in, making it all one town. That steep rise in back is Mount Srdj which protects Dubrovnik from the nasty north winds here nicknamed "the bura."

Here's that street today called Placa or Stradun. Once the left side was the end of a continent and the right was an island -- both with briskly descending coastlines like that green shore in the distance. As you would expect of what was once a watery channel, this 300-yard passage is level -- but the hilly town it bisects rises steeply on either side like a butterfly's wings. A series of civic monumental buildings start just in front of the clock tower in the distance.

Here's another view of what that butterfly's torso looks like: the main drag in Croatia's southernmost town. Dubrovnik is about as far north as Detroit, Michigan, but has a Mediterranean climate. It was once the capital of the Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa in Italian), the smallest of the Maritime republics that also included Pisa, Genoa and Venice. As its own nation it took great pride in its independence and the rights of its citizens and had all sorts of checks and balances to keep a tyrant from seizing power. It was one of the first countries to recognize those 1776 upstarts who eventually became the disUnited States of America. United, it managed to be relatively free for four centuries by playing the major powers such as Venice and the Ottomans against each other. Will our republic last as long?

This map explains why a medieval city could sport such a wide street. It started as two towns: the Roman Ragusium (Ragusa) at bottom -- an island separated from the Slavic Dubrovnik. An extraordinary bit of 12th century civil engineering filled in the channel and left space for the long Placa (Stradun) and the wide expanse in front of the Rector's palace -- #3 on the above map. (Thanks to F. W. Carter for this map.)

Here's a much darker view: Dubrovnik after the 1991 fall bombing. The Serbs in the Yugoslav army targeted cultural areas (of course, protected by the Hague convention) such as Dubrovnik. Until then, this town through skilled diplomacy had not known war in over a millennium despite living in the middle of its enemies (Venice, the Turks, etc.) Strategically, Dubrovnik had nothing to offer the Serbs and there were no Serbs here to liberate. Rockets tore into the town's tourist hotels that sheltered mostly women-and-children refugees. All roads leading to Dubrovnik were cut off as well as sea and air access: 50,000 people had no water, electricity, or food supply. The West protested Europe's latest war, but did little else -- sending observers instead of warriors. Fourteen years later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced the general who gave the orders to 8 years in prison.(Photo: Romano Cagnoni, in Newsweek)

The town has that hilly, compressed feel of other former capitals such as Toledo, Spain. Here clockwise we see the old port at 9 o'clock; Lokrum island at 10 o'clock; and the Jesuit church at noon. The main drag Stradun points its diagonal at the old port. This island of Lokrum was once the home supposedly of Richard the Lionhearted after a 1192 shipwreck on the way home from the crusades. After Napoleon came by, it housed Archduke Maximilian who had that unfortunate misunderstanding with the Mexicans shortly thereafter. Today it's the home of a Botanical Garden and (like some Croatian islands) a nudist beach. Nothing like wild life.

Tourism is the main driver for the economy today as cruise ships such as this disgorge their throngs during the season. (In 2008, cruise ships stopped over 700 times -- jamming crowds into a walled town of 1500 inhabitants!) The Dinaric Alps here plunge into clear sea giving this a beautiful -- but not necessarily sandy beached -- coastline. While winds in this part of the world can be rough, Dubrovnik is insulated from the rain-soaked southern wind (called the jugo) by the island of Lokrum, and from the cold norther (called the bura) by mount Srdj.Before tourism, Dubrovnik's wealth depended upon trade. Nobles controlled most of the land, all of the political power -- but not all of the wealth which could be earned through shipbuilding and shrewd trading. The common people had good jobs, individual rights, and prosperity. Civic unrest was pretty much unheard of.

Once mainland and island were connected, walls rose. Dubrovnik's walls are highly visible as one approaches the city, day or night, from land or by sea. One of the strongest set of fortifications in Europe, these were never breached. The town was conquered only once, when that rascal Napoleon and his buddies were invited in to help protect the place -- and then decided to stay. Despite these formidable walls, to a large degree, Dubrovnik's best defense were the skillful diplomats who played the city-states's enemies off against each other such as the Venetians and the Turks. (Diplomacy sometimes consisted of paying tribute -- and bribes -- to each of those countries as well.) At the rear we see the Croatian coast rising up Mount Srdj. Croatia is only about 4 miles wide at this point. Over the mountain lies Bosnia and Herzegovina -- land of the Ottoman's until 1878.

These walls were a long time abuilding and today are superbly maintained. They make for a pleasant walk of just over a mile. These replaced previous defenses and were built and rebuilt from the 11th to the 14th centuries as the city expanded. The Turk threat starting in the 15th century gave Dubrovnik, like much of southern Europe, a strong incentive to further fortify its defenses, especially on the land side. Work continued into the second half of the 17th century.The Russian feet besieged the city for a month in 1806, sending over 3000 cannonballs against these walls. Using its usually trick of encouraging its enemies into destroying each other, Dubrovnik agreed to give the French safe passage to fight the Russians. They fought -- but stayed. Thus ended four centuries of this mercantile republic's independence.The stone path here rises to the highest defense, the MinÄeta Tower. Below it is a separate scarp wall designed to take the hit of an artillery attack while keeping the tower defenses intact.

These walls had to be good as Dubrovnik is still here. Above, the dark green blob was for four centuries the Ottoman's westernmost province: Bosnia, which hovered just over the Dinaric Alps threatening the skinny republic of Dubrovnik shown in magenta. Pale green Venice encroached with its string of islands and shoreline colonies, creeping like a snake along the northeast shore of the Adriatic. For citizens of tiny Dubrovnik, good fences, and diplomacy, made good neighbors. (Thanks to the University of Texas for putting this map into the public domain.)

Here's what a bit of that green blob looks like at ground level where it's the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We stopped and got our passports stamped. (If Croatia gets into the European Union, this will be a hassle.)

Here's what a bit of that green blob looks like at ground level where it's the 12-mile border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. (See the magenta arrow on the CIA's map at right). We stopped and got our passports stamped. (When Croatia joins the European Union, this will be a hassle.)This is the land Dubrovnik gave to the Ottomans so that the Venetians could not move its army by land without entering Ottoman territory. For centuries it served as the best part of the walls of Dubrovnik. But not as scenic...

...as this work by renaissance architects. Here's an example of the land-side walls looking southwest from the main gate towards the Bokar fort as these thick walls hover over their moat (now a garden.) The land walls are typically 12-19 feet thick -- and strong enough to survive the 1667 earthquake that devastated most of Dubrovnik. At center we see a square tower -- 1 of 15 built during the 14th century. The lower portion is the scarp wall. At right is one of two cylindrical towers built by the famous Florentine architect Michelozzo. These walls held even during the 2 month onslaught of the modern Yugoslav army in 1991. Modern military theory holds that artillery made castle walls irrelevant long ago -- but Dubrovnik stayed as impregnable as it has since these walls were built. (It helped that the Serbs really didn't know how to use their attack hardware all that well).

Here's an outside view of the stone wedding cake known as the MinÄeta tower -- the work of two architects more famous as sculptors, one Renaissance and the other Gothic. The middle section was done by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi, builder for the Medicis. As a sculptor and collaborator with Donatello, Michelozzo did subtlety. But as a defensive architect, he did force as well. Here he added 20-foot walls atop the existing 4-sided fort. After Michelozzo, work continued by a Venice-trained sculptor/architect from the Croatian city of Zadar named Juraj Dalmatinac (or in Italian, Giorgio da Sebenico.) Dalmatinac was not quite the Renaissance man like the Michelozzo. He's best known as a medieval sculptor and his masterpiece is the Gothic cathedral (and UNESCO World Heritage site) in his home town of Å ibenik. Construction on this tower completed in 1464 -- since then it has been a symbol of the impregnability of Dubrovnik.

Just inside the main gate, Dubrovnik reminds its many visitors of the devastation caused by the 1991 assault by the Yugoslav army as they attempted to capture Dubrovnik from Croatia and give it to Montenegro. Over 650,000 shells hit the area with more than 1,000 landing inside the city walls where over 250 people died. The marks show where shells hit in this UNESCO World Heritage site with no military targets. (Over 2/3rds of the buildings took a hit.) Dubrovnik's location far from the major portion of Croatian territory made it difficult for her defenders to obtain assistance from their countrymen. Serb attackers shelled the city from the mountains above and the sea around it after cutting off food and electricity. Water was rationed inside at 1.2 gallons per day. (If you have an efficient American toilet, you use 1.6 gallons per flush).

Most of the buildings were rebuilt -- new roofs show up with a slightly different color of tile than those lucky enough to have been in place for centuries. A few still raise roofless walls to the sky in protest against the 1991 siege.

Built triangular in shape to fit its rocky underpinning, Fort Lawrence (Lovrjenac) is known as Dubrovnik's Gibraltar. The rock base is not level -- creating the need for the three terraces we see here. (Today these terraces make a great backdrop for the Summer Festival's staging of "Hamlet" as Danish ghosts walk these walls.) The sea-side walls are very thick -- nearly 40 feet thick -- to resist the enemy cannons. By contrast, the walls facing the city are thin and easily breached. The reason for this is that Dubrovnik wanted to ensure that the fort commander would not use his position to seize control of the city he was sworn to protect.

The other end of town is protected by St. John's fortress (from which this picture was taken) and the Revelin Fortress shown in mid picture jutting out like the prow of a battleship. Revelin was built in the 16th century as the Ottoman Turk danger grew. For 11 years no other construction was allowed so that all resources could be focused on fortifying this point with all deliberate speed. A chain would be suspended between these forts to the breakwater (called "Kaise") at right to keep out enemy ships during time of siege.

This long building on the shoreline just south of the walled city was built as the lazaretto, or quarantine. Those towns like Dubrovnik which made their living by the sea trade were at ground zero for the spread of infections. This risk was somewhat lessened by placing new arrivals into separate buildings (even islands) for forty days (and Dubrovnik gave us the term "quarantine" derived from the Venetian-Italian dialect word for "forty.") This building was created and modified from the 16th to 18th centuries, but its predecessors date from the 14th century when the Black Plague eliminated nearly a third of Europe's population. Six long buildings and courtyards rise perpendicular to their connecting sea wall in one of the few quarantines left in Europe.

We've got about 2000 more words of text and lots more pictures of Dubrovnik's walls at http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/TheDefensiveWallsOfDubrovnikCroatia#slideshow/5412578347058699538 . Let's now step inside the walls using the west entrance (the Pile Gate) as do nearly all of the tourists.

A hexadecagon inside a square! Just inside the western (Pile) gate, we encounter the Paskoja Milicevica Square surrounded primarily by religious buildings. It's famous for its 15th century fountain built by Dubrovnik's master plumber: Onofrio de la Cava from Naples. Despite having its top story removed by the 1667 earthquake, this reservoir stored water brought by aqueduct from the Dubrovnik River for over 550 years -- until the Serbs bombed it in 1991. The Placa (Stradun) street starts here where the marshy channel was filled at the end of the 11th century connecting the Roman island-colony at right with the Slavic mainland at left.

Most towns in the region gathered rainwater in cisterns below their squares. Not so here as Onofrio brought water from the TrebiÅ¡njica River 7 miles to the northwest using aqueducts such as this one visible inside the city and most likely feeding the uphill Jesuit square. Onofrio's feeder split outside the city in order to provide the Pile area workshops to the west with water. This one entered the city at its highest and northernmost point where the Minceta tower would eventually rise.

Onofrio's aqueduct fed several fountains that he built in the city around 1440 including separate ones for the Jesuit and Jewish quarters as well as for the fish market. This is his largest, creatively called the Big Onofrio Fountain. (Size mattered as it was also the town reservoir so we'd expect it to be about the size of a water tower in an American small town.) It was even bigger until the 1667 earthquake knocked off its second story. Water fills the basin that surrounds this domed structure through spouts at the center of the decorated emblems...

Each of the 16 sides has an elaborate carved medallion with a water spigot at center feeding a horse-trough below. The ravages of earthquake and war have made many of these candidates for restoration. At top left, a plaque spans the header between two Corinthian pillars.

Across from the larger Onofrio fountain rises the Renaissance facade of the Church of the Savior. The Dubrovnik Senate commissioned this 1528 building in thanksgiving for the city surviving the 1520 earthquake. Its 3-leaf semi-circular cap bears a strong resemblance to several churches in this region as this was oft-imitated (and itself imitated a more elaborate facade of St. Zaccaria's in Venice.) It does earthquakes well as it is about the only building to survive the 1667 earthquake pretty much intact.

As my Nikon licked the glass in the church's locked door, it captured this curious mixture of church and heaven -- perhaps Salvatore Dali meeting the Renaissance. From the looks of the Vatican II altar, this is still used as a church. Here, however, it is being prepared for a bit of chamber music. The semi-circular apse supposedly meets Gothic vaulting not visible in this picture.

More text and pictures of the exterior of the Church of the Savior are available at this site: http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/ZagrebChurchesSupplementalPictures#slideshow/5406612235191991570 .

Just south of the Paskoja Milicevica Square with the Onofrio fountain is another monastery -- all but ignored. Once a convent for St. Claire nuns and one of the world's first orphanages for abandoned babies, it was closed by Napoleon's troops while they stayed in the city in the early 1800s (and ended Dubrovnik's republic.) They used it as an ammunition dump and stables. Today the town's tourist office uses this late 13th century complex as popular but pricey tourist restrooms.)

The Franciscan Monastery (tower above) anchors the west end of Dubrovnik, just inside the Pile gate and extends northward towards the Minceta tower. Here we look west past the Franciscan monastery tower, over the Pile Gate, and towards Ft. Lawrence across the rocky but small west harbor. The monastery was built outside of Dubrovnik but moved inside the walls to protect it in the 14th century.Dubrovnik's wealth made it the "Athens of Dalmatia" and the religious played a huge part. The three great orders each held edges of a triangle that overlays the old town: Jesuits to the south, Dominicans to the east, and the Franciscans here to the west.

The Franciscan complex envelopes one of the best Romanesque cloisters on the Dalmatian Coast. It's separated from its Gothic garden courtyard by double columns each with unique (and rarely religious) capitals. Here we see perhaps Arab-inspired carved vegetation. Dubrovnik sailors knew Arab architecture well as they sailed the length of the Mediterranean.

Most cloisters have paths that cross in the center at a fountain. But here Dubrovnik's Franciscan monastery cloister fountain is at the end of a wide path with stone niches on either side. This 1438 fountain was also erected by Onofrio di Giordano della Cava when he brought the waters of River Dubrovnik to the city.

The Franciscan Monastery's double columns frame the oldest existing garden in Dubrovnik, dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. It also contained one of the Dalmatian coast's most important libraries. Even today, its pharmacy -- in continuous operation since 1317 and the third oldest in Europe -- still sells products (but not really pharmaceuticals, just lotions and snake oil to the tourists.)

The monastery cloister somehow survived intact after the devastating 1676 earthquake. A few pieces of the rest of the structure were dusted off and included in the new monastery such as this lovely portal. When built in 1498, it was the most elaborate in Dubrovnik. This Pieta has a bit of Gothic stiffness but the folds in the clothing presage Renaissance carving.

The marble pulpit (lower left) also survived the 1667 earthquake. See it and about 35 more pictures and captions of this structure in our supplemental page at http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/ReligiousBuildingsOfDubrovnikCroatiaSupplementalSlides?authkey=Gv1sRgCLi3756S4J6UuQE#slideshow/5415663130942401778 .

Let's now trek down the Placa (Stradun) towards that distant clock tower that anchors the eastern Loggia or Loza square. The buildings on each side were constructed by order of the Senate after the 1667 earthquake had leveled the heterogeneous collection of Renaissance palaces that the nobility had created. The Senate dictated baroque fronts of approximately the same height -- with retail space on the first floor. Today almost all of the retail is dedicated to the tourist trade -- only 3 stores in all of the old town sell food to the locals.That earthquake was the beginning of the end of Dubrovnik's golden age. Diplomacy --and the town walls which survived -- kept its enemies at bay as the damaged and vulnerable town rebuilt. About 140 years later the Republic became part of the French empire (for a while.) Pay attention when towers collapse.

Placa (Stradun) Street ends by forming Loggia (Loza) square at its east end. It's the long descender of a backward "L" that then leads south(to the right in this picture) towards the rector's palace and the cathedral. Like Placa street, this square was formed at the end of the 11th century when the marsh was filled in. Behind the clock tower is the old harbor. At left is the Sponza Palace. Just to the right of the clock tower is the Main Guard House rebuilt with Gothic mullioned windows suggesting the earlier building that died in the 1667 earthquake. In front of it in its own arch at lower right is ...

...another Onofrio fountain, much smaller but more elegant than its big brother to the west. Both have distributed water since 1438.

Next to the fountain is this 2008 memorial commemorating the 500th birthday of Croatian Renaissance author and cleric Marin DrÅ¾iÄ‡ whose comedies played throughout Europe around 1550 (decades before Shakespeare and Moliere elaborated on many of his themes.) He'd probably enjoy the irony of his statue being here in his hometown that prized its independence since he tried to overthrow the republic. Dubrovnik's theatrical museum is named for this author who wrote 11 plays during the 15 years he lived here -- before moving to Venice and trying to enlist the Medicis in his conspiracy.

Statues of historic individuals such as Marin DrÅ¾iÄ‡'s bronze are rare in Dubrovnik. More common are religious or mythical statues such as the Gothic column by Bonino of Milan. It honors Roland, Charlemagne's nephew and epic warrior. From 1418 to the early 1800s, the staff that rose from here flew the flag of the Republic. A storm blew it over in 1825 but it was re-erected 50 years later -- this time facing north. In medieval times, many trading towns had their own system of measurement. For Dubrovnik, the standard was Roland's forearm, called an "ell" (for elbow as it extended from that joint to the end of his fingers somewhat like the cubit used since Egyptian times.)

The side of Roland's column is seen at center with the flagpole telescoping upward in front of the clock tower. Note here the Sponza Palace with a Renaissance loggia beneath Gothic mullioned windows. Behind the column we see an arch that led to the port, making this well positioned as the republic's customs house. This Gothic/Renaissance amalgam is typical of the palaces built along the Adriatic in the 15th century; most of those in Dubrovnik were destroyed in the 1667 earthquake. But not the Sponza palace which now suggests how the town looked in its golden age just before the earth moved. (Note the vertical risers between the windows -- they are irons meant to protect from future earthquakes, as is St. Blaise's statue at top center.)

Here's another view showing the arched customs gate to the right of the Sponza palace. To its right is the 100 foot high bell tower built by three local masons in 1444. Earthquakes were not kind to this structure and it was completely rebuilt from the original plans in 1929.

Here we view the Renaissance loggia of the Sponza palace looking west up Placa (Stradun) street. The porch was added in 1516 by the Andrijic brothers. Besides the customs offices and warehouses, this palace also housed Dubrovnik's mint.

Dubrovnik was at the peak of its golden age when the 1667 earthquake leveled most of the town. Then It was at the mercy of its rivals including Venice and the Ottomans. Besides great diplomacy, one reason the republic survived was this building where the affairs of state could still be undertaken. The Sponza loggia fronts St. Blaise church and the column of Roland at right. Today the palace serves as the archives, one of the most important in the world since in the 13th century Dubrovnik required all public and private legal documents be registered.

Let's take a closer look at St. Blaise, shown here above its monumental staircase with the scaffold-clad cathedral dome to its left. The 1667 earthquake severely damaged the previous Romanesque structure and a 1706 fire finished the job. The Senate hired a prominent sculptor named Marino Gropelli to model this baroque church on one in his native Venice. (Gropelli was a popular artist and Peter the Great hired him to sculpt some of the Summer Garden statues in St. Petersburg.)

At top St. Blaise rises in front of the church's oblong dome. This structure is essentially a cylinder enclosed in a Renaissance square building.

Inside, the main altar glows with typical Baroque elements including the ornate organ with gilt-framed oil paintings...

...and this inlaid marble altar with delicate facial features and drapery folds!

We have more explanation and pictures of St. Blaise Church at our supplemental picture site at: http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/ReligiousBuildingsOfDubrovnikCroatiaSupplementalSlides?authkey=Gv1sRgCLi3756S4J6UuQE#slideshow/5417741278528757122 .

Let's look at one of the most impressive civil buildings along the Dalmatian coast -- Dubrovnik's Rector's Palace. The Senate (50-60 people who ran Dubrovnik) met here -- and forced their "leader" to live here without leaving the building during his term. (This wasn't all that bad since to keep anyone from grabbing power, the city restricted rectors to a 30 day term. They could serve many times as terms appeared to be unlimited, just not very long. Dubrovnik played its external enemies off against each other and structured its internal politics to keep tyrants from emerging.)

This somewhat warped picture shows the lower floor with its Renaissance loggia supporting beautiful Gothic windows above. The wide areas on each side of the loggia were once the base for towers -- both of which were damaged when the place suffered a fire and explosion 11 years after it was built -- to replace an earlier fortress destroyed by an ammunition explosion. (Keep in mind that the harbor is just behind this site). Two major earthquakes also took their toll. The rebuilding of this once-Gothic building cleverly harmonizes Renaissance and Baroque elements as well.Each night the keys to the locked gates of Dubrovnik were brought here and turned over to the Rector in a pompous ceremony.

Near the south end of the wide street anchored at the north by the Sponza Palace, stands the Rector's Palace with its own loggia). Looking up, we see Mount Srdj, Dubrovnik's protector from the harsh north winds (the bura). Mount Srdj shows traces of the fort the French built when Napoleon's guys overstayed their welcome. In 1991, the Serbs shelled from up there and destroyed the cable car that once took tourists to its 1300 foot summit.Events have conspired to destroy the Palace at right since Onofrio's original design (yes, the fountain guy). Subsequent rebuilds have changed its exterior dramatically. The boxy corners originally had towers that disappeared in a 1463 explosion. The facade then received its upper Gothic windows over a Renaissance loggia. The south end (we see a bit of it at the right) was restored after the 1520 earthquake in the Baroque style. Severely damaged, somehow this structure survived the 1667 earthquake that leveled most buildings within Dubrovnik's walls.

Inside, the Rector's Palace features a Renaissance atrium used as 1 of 30 venues for the annual summertime Dubrovnik Festival which features the performing arts. This festival is no mere sop to the tourists; Dubrovnik geographic position created trade wealth. Wealth and access made this town for centuries the heart of southern Slav culture. (In Croatian, "Yugoslavia" literally means the land of the south Slavs.)Eventually Venice conquered most of the Dalmatian coast except for the Dubrovnik republic. They actively discouraged education and the arts: they needed the coastal population for soldiers and galley slaves. (After seeing Venice twice, I don't think I would argue that they needed more artists!) This left independent Dubrovnik pretty much unchallenged as the cultural heart of Croatia.The baroque staircase was added after the 1520 earthquake and includes...

...a "hand" rail.If you want to see more of the Rector's Palace, try our slide show at http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/RectorSPalaceDubrovnikCroatiaSupplementalPictures?authkey=Gv1sRgCPP3k_bo6dXYwAE#slideshow/5414418996027008706 .

The Cathedral rises across from the Rector's Palace. Like St. Blaise church, it's an 18th century rebuild of its predecessor destroyed by the 1667 earthquake. This angle shows its Latin cross shape with three naves underneath a crossing dome. The Romanesque 12-14th century cathedral this replaced also had a cupola -- but that one was richly decorated with statues. Supposedly Richard the Lion Heart had been shipwrecked on the island in the background in 1192 after the 3rd Crusade and had donated money for the earlier cathedral.

Restoration work in 1981 uncovered the foundations of what appeared to be a 7th century cathedral -- some of the first indications that the city was thriving that early. After the 1667 earthquake, an influential Dubrovnik cleric had an important job in Rome -- and convinced the Senate to use the famous Roman architect Andrea Buffalini to build the new cathedral in Roman Baroque style.

Buffalini's baroque cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, has not been as well restored as St. Blaise up the block. Its roof statues need some refurbishment.

The four Corinthian capitals that bring a bit of Baroque frosting to the Cathedral's portal show a bit of neglect -- but scaffolding around the dome suggests that Dubrovnik will eventually get around to restoring the rest of the cathedral's exterior. The original work started in 1671 and completed in 1713.

Inside Buffalini designed a 3-nave baroque space defined by soaring columns beneath the cupola. From high above, baroque windows bathe the sparse walls with light.

The side altars are resplendent in marble such as this one to the Czech John of Nepomuk, martyred by not-so-good King Wenceslaus who wanted this priest to break the seal of the confessional. (Another version has him on the wrong side of politics, and a third makes him a figment of the Jesuits' imagination.) He was drowned shortly after this church opened. Whatever his confused history, John's altar is a masterpiece of violet marble exploding in northern Baroque style. Nearby is the entrance to the Cathedral treasury, the richest on the Dalmatian coast. So rich that it took three different keys -- held by both church and state representatives -- to open it.

These cherubs watch Jon of Nepomuk's feet. Even though he died by forced drowning, he is now the patron saint of floods (but probably not of waterboarders in undisclosed locations.)

Most of the stain glass found here has a late 19th century feel to it. Given extent of the Serb shelling in 1991, it may be even newer.

Here's another side altar with inlaid Corinthian columns framing this oil of St. Bernard. It's the work of Carlo degli Frangi.

Just west of the cathedral, we encountered an active market square named for Dubrovnik's most famous poet, Ivan GunduliÄ‡. THE figure of the Golden Age of Dubrovnik literature, he wrote dramas and both epic and lyric poetry. Bono recently recited some of his lyrics extolling freedom.By day this is a market; at night during the summer, it is large performance space for the Dubrovnik Festival. Of course, this square would have an Onofrio fountain but also...

...a more modern statue of Ivan GunduliÄ‡, in this case a bronze by Ivan RendiÄ‡, who championed Croatian nationalism and placed bronzes of its heroes in many public squares. The panels below GunduliÄ‡'s statue depict scenes from his epic "Osmun."When this statue was unveiled in 1893 (GunduliÄ‡'s 300th birthday), it exacerbated nationalistic rivalries between Croats and Serbs -- about 100 years before the Serbs would return to Dubrovnik with their mortars.GunduliÄ‡ was from a long line of Dubrovnik nobility: both his father and son were rectors many times over. (Remember, rectors serve for only one month.) GunduliÄ‡ himself would have been rector but he died at age 50 -- the youngest age that a man could serve. Remembered as a writer of Croatian Baroque epic poems rather than a politician, GunduliÄ‡ was a champion of the counter-reformation and, no suprise, was trained by those premier counter-reformationist Jesuits whose church we see raising its cross high above GunduliÄ‡'s statue in the distance.

The Jesuit church is on a steep slope of what was once the island protecting the Roman colony of Ragusa. This monumental stairs built in 1738 by Pietro Passalacqua leads up to it. Passalacqua later worked on several basilica facades in Rome. While these steps could use a bit of spiffying up, they were extensively repaired after being damaged in 1991 by Serb shelling. Dubrovnik likes tourists to believe that these resemble the Spanish Steps in Rome -- but that's a huge stretch.

This view taken from the city walls shows a trace of the thin baroque facade at center -- and the much simpler buttressesed nave and side chapels of the Jesuit church. To the left is the old university, Collegium Ragusinum.The Reformation was virtually unknown in Catholic Dubrovnik and so there was little need for this great counter-Reformation order to combat it. But when Dubrovnik quelled a rebellion (over taxation) on the nearby island of Levano in 1602, 2 priests were murdered and Pope Clement VIII imposed a ban which he lifted 2 years later -- on condition that Dubrovnik bring in the Jesuits.

The facade is similar to another Roman structure with which this Church of St. Ignatius shares its name. During the 17th and 18th centuries, many members of the order were architects and deliberately shared plans to create a Jesuit style whose intent was to glorify the Catholic Church (as opposed to the Spartan structures of some Protestant religions gaining footholds in parts of Europe.)Look closely at the foreground. Although this is one of town's major squares, it is not paved and drainage of the October rains is somewhat challenged. In Venice, this would be a square built over a cistern that would hold the rainwater. Onofrio's aqueducts make such drainage unnecessary in Dubrovnik. Instead, it gets mountain-spring water -- and puddles after the rain.

Built perpendicular to the church, the old Collegium Ragusinum educated Dubrovnik's elite. After the Jesuit order was disbanded in 1773, Napoleon's troops used the place as a hospital and it had several other lives until 1941 when the local bishop made it into a high school and a seminary. Students here take four years of Latin and classical Greek. For some of you readers, that would be deja vu (pardon the French, s'il vous plaÃ®t.)

Dubrovnik's Church of St. Ignatius is the design of the Jesuit architect and baroque painter Andrea Pozzo -- sort of. It was clearly inspired by its namesake in Rome. At the main altar, baroque multi-colored marble columns and ornate frames highlight frescoes by Gaetano Garcia showing scenes from the life of the Jesuit founder, Ignatius of Loyola. Above...

...the frescoed apse half-dome over the IHS symbol of the Jesuits, Ignatius enters the pantheon of the saints. -- and Christ offers him a crown. Perhaps the greatest baroque ceiling painter, the Jesuit lay brother Pozzo as architect here tasked the Sicilian Gaetano Garcia with creating this this fresco over the sanctuary. In imitation of Pozzo's masterpiece in Rome, Garcia depicts the Apotheosis of St. Ignatius (shown here in mass attire at about 5 o'clock position) as he looks up at the trinity with Christ holding out a crown for him. This may be the most impressive painting in Dubrovnik.

We've posted more pictures of what may be the largest and most elaborate church in town -- along with some comparison photos of St. Ignatius Church in Rome and the Spanish Steps at http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/ReligiousBuildingsOfDubrovnikCroatiaSupplementalSlides?authkey=Gv1sRgCLi3756S4J6UuQE#slideshow/5418131468588334706 .

Let's now look at the monastery of the third order hosted by Dubrovnik at its east end where we see their bell tower watching over the harbor. The tower was not completed until the 18th century even though the Dominicans arrived in 1225. Much of the rest of their complex was completed in the 14th century..

Established at a key point on the eastern defenses of the town, parts of the Dominican complex served as prosaic town walls. Eventually the walls were extended around the monastery which allowed Bonino of Milan (remember Roland's statue?) to add this now beautifully restored Gothic arch to the southern entrance to the church in 1419. The half-round stairs solve the problem of the church being built on a hillside with its worship space high above the street level. It unfolds elegantly from this simple small ashlar wall.

At the west end of the old city, the cloister of the Franciscan monastery is near the gate where most tourists enter. Consequently its cloister is filled with noisy tour guides stewarding their charges like so many cameraed cows. By contrast, the Dominican cloister at this east end is nearly empty. The beauty of these arches with their trifora openings is enhanced by the quiet.

Inside, we have a great hall church -- a large worship space designed to bring in huge numbers of the faithful to hear the sermon. In fact, this is one of the largest Gothic buildings on the eastern Adriatic coast. The box of the nave leads to a 3-arched sanctuary that suggests a Gothic cathedral with its nave and side aisles. Note the simplicity of the wall.

We've posted more descriptive text and pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/ReligiousBuildingsOfDubrovnikCroatiaSupplementalSlides?authkey=Gv1sRgCLi3756S4J6UuQE#slideshow/5419960202309559138 .

Let's now explore some of the Dubrovnik area. The old city (marked with an "A" on this Google map) holds about 1500 of the 50,000 inhabitants of greater Dubrovnik. Its now larger harbor is shown here at upper left and the road that crosses the Ombria (TrebiÅ¡njica) River at about 10 o'clock position does so ...

... on the elegant Franjo Tudman Bridge. Completed in 2002, this asymmetric single pylon stay cable bridge is over 1599 feet long and was designed by the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Zagreb. Winds are quite strong here: computer simulations were run and models of the bridge were tested in wind tunnels. This paid off when winter storms sent 70 mph winds vibrated the 19 cable pairs in 2005 and 2006. But snow stuck to the cables changing the predicted vibrations; shortly thereafter new technology was developed to dampen the effect of snow and wind by a factor of 10, making this bridge -- already one of the longest stay bridges in Europe -- also a pioneer.To the right is Dubrovnik's modern port also called the Port of GruÅ¾. Here the heavy freight is off-loaded and most of the 700 passenger ship landings take place each year.

Considerably less low tech was this tornado we saw roiling the Adriatic just north of the bridge. This is why you test your designs in wind tunnels! Croatia has over 1000 islands in the Adriatic that shelter much of its towns like Dubrovnik from the south winds. Here we have open sea.

Here's a typical view of the Dalmatian coast a few miles north of Dubrovnik: lots of rocky coves reaching up to mountains steeply descending to the clear sea. Because this area was firmly in Dubrovnik's control and near the city, it became the site for the nobles to build their villas with gardens copied after the Italians. As you can see, this terrain is not an ideal place for Italian Renaissance gardens whose symmetrical boxwood hedge layouts eat up a lots of flat lawns.The most impressive and best preserved of these gardens is near here...

... It's the old Renaissance estate at Trsteno, a village up the coast about 12 miles from Dubrovnik. At its center is this fountain with statues, including that of Neptune, god of the sea which he can just about see from this vantage point. Originally, the aqueduct ended in a cave with statues. This redo with Neptune, 2 nymphs, and a dolphin is from the 18th century. Statues in Dubrovnik gardens were integrated with their fountains and never stood alone. Such lavish fountains were also rare; most water came from the sea as fresh water was quite scarce (and forbidden by law to be used for garden ponds.)

What makes this garden work even today is this aqueduct with its 14 arches leading to that Renaissance fountain.

Unlike the Renaissance gardens of Italy, Dubrovnik gardens often contain pergolas for vines, often leading to (and extending) the house. Typically their supporting columns would be placed on low walls which define the garden in the absence of boxwood shrubs. This use of stone walls evolved from the monastery gardens of the middle ages. Pergolas themselves are much older and date back to at least ancient Egypt.

We discuss the Italian gardens of Dubrovnik and show many more pictures at this site: http://picasaweb.google.com/schmitt.dick/TrstenoArboretum#slideshow/5415911883058455394 .

Back to the old town for a parting thought. Here TV antennas and clothesline suggest that people still live here: in fact, only about 1500 still do. Most apartments are being sold to part-timers. Apartment costs are rising and are now above $500/square foot -- about half of Manhattan's but high enough to make the native population threatened. As we would see on this trip, this would be even more the case at the Adriatic's biggest jewel, Venice.

Thanks to Croatian art historian Anthony Travirka for most of the information on these slides not credited to others. (Wikipedia and the many sites derived from it are also full of his text although he is rarely credited.)

See our other Dubrovnik pictures by clicking here

Trsteno Arboretium

2010-01-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

Trsteno Arboretum

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visited on a rainy 17 October 2009

(Double click on any picture to enlarge it)

Note: This presentation provides further pictures and commentary for our Dubrovnik overview. It's best to see that presentation first by clicking here for a slide show or click here for traditional web pages.

To see the same information, click for a slideshow or traditional web pages.

Here's a typical view of the Dalmatian coast a few miles north of Dubrovnik: lots of rocky coves reaching up to mountains steeply descending to the clear sea.As you can see, it's not an ideal place for Italian Renaissance gardens whose symmetrical boxwood hedge layouts eat up a lots of flat terrain...

..like this taken at Versailles. (OK, this place is French, but its lineage to the Renaissance gardens of Tuscany is pretty direct thanks to the Medici's providing queens for the kings of France.) The gardens around Dubrovnik have Renaissance pretensions, but not much room for such double axes layouts defined by boxwood. Instead, they use stones -- lots of them -- and adapt to the steeply descending mountain terrain usually with terraces. Instead of these double axes which cross at a grand fountain, they are lucky to get one axis (path) stepping down terraces. But the steep descent that makes the above view impossible makes another quite likely: sloping gardens with great views of the blue Adriatic.

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The best preserved of these garden-villas is at Trsteno, a village up the coast about 12 miles from Dubrovnik and once a popular place for homes for seamen and rich citizens of Dubrovnik. Today, tourists come for the Arboretum, a few hundred yards from this spot. However, the Arboretum appears to take jurisdiction over two huge Oriental plane tees right on the highway in the village square. Their locations is no surprise. Such large old plane trees are common in town squares in this region as they thrive on hot summers if they can get sufficient water and town squares were often located over springs.

The 2 Oriental plane trees in Trsteno's square are nearly 200 feet tall and about 16 feet in diameter and are thought to be 500 years old. If so, they would have been planted about the time a prominent Dubrovnik family established their villa which became today's arboretum -- just down a winding verdant slope a few steps from here.

Across from the square is a small and simple chapel (or perhaps the parish church as only about 250 people live here). It features this large vestibule. Excavations of Trsteno's Catholic church suggest humans settled here at least by the 5th century. Does your church have a yellow mailbox?

Another view of the plane tree.Because this area was 1) close to Dubrovnik and 2) under that town's permanent control, it was a favored spot for the nobles to place their summer homes. About 300 estates have been found in this area and about 70 Renaissance villas are somewhat preserved with about 20 in reasonable shape. Most were built during the 16th century after the 1520 earthquake. The 20th century saw the demise of most of Dubrovnik's estates as urban growth devoured land near cities. Many that survived were attacked during the 1991 war. If anything is left, it's typically the house itself, not the gardens. Trsteno's garden/arboretum is alone in being protected as a complete complex. (But with no thanks to the attacking Serbs.)

Even though the village has a population of just over 200 people, it keeps its sparse war memorial spotless. The village square, shaded by the massive Oriental plane trees stands quietly beside.The Serbs (Yugoslav People's Army) attacked the Arboretum by sea and air, destroying a large part of it as a form of cultural eradication since, as far as we can tell, the exotic fauna were up to no subversive activity.

A prominent Dubrovnik family established their summer residence here around the time that Columbus was sailing on his first voyage. (As trade with the New World increased, the Maritime Republics such a Dubrovnik and Venice would begin their long economic decline as they were no longer at the center of the trade routes.) This estate started with a Gothic-Renaissance home erected by Ivan Marinov Gucetic-Gozze. As you can see, today this is more of an Arboretum than an Italian manicured garden.Dubrovnik's landscape architects would typically provide a single path (axis) about 100 yards long and about 10 feet wide. Instead of Italian boxwood hedges, they would use stones to create walls of various heights. At the edges would be the tallest walls to make the garden look inward -- except on the sea side, where, of course, they would highlight the sea view often with a belvedere.

Dubrovnik gardens tried to please the nose as much as the eyes with aromatic citrus plants and herbs being favorites (and useful in cuisine, as well.)After WWII, this estate was confiscated by the communist regime. Eventually it was placed under the control of the Yugoslav (and later Croatian) Academy of the Sciences and received modern scientific management.The communists were not the first to discourage the wealthy from holding elaborate estates. At its peak, Dubrovnik banned excessive luxury and the flaunting of wealth through extensive gardens.

While Dubrovnik seamen were encouraged to bring back seeds from all sorts of exotic species, they primarily stuck to those of flowers.Dubrovnik's landscape architects are, for the most part, unknown. It's likely that designs were sent from Italy as many Italian architects and craftsmen (especially from Florence) lived in Dubrovnik while on commission. However, Italian landscape architects would not be effective unless they were on site as the Dalmatian coast presents significant challenges to Tuscan garden designs which assumed relatively flat spaces suitable for boxwood hedges forming criss-crossing axes. But while Dubrovnik's gardens are smaller and more modest than their Italian counterparts, they exploit their high vistas of the sea.

Given the mild climate, Dubrovnik's gardens (like those in Italy) were extended salons and used for plays, readings, and other family entertainment. The prominent Dalmatian philosopher Nikola Vitov Gucetic wrote much of his work here in his family's garden.

What makes this garden work even today is the aqueduct with its 14 arches leading to a Renaissance fountain.

The aqueduct leads over 200 feet to a fountain below. Few Dubrovnik gardens had such aqueducts and the use of the town's water for gardens was prohibited after 1436. Most irrigated by gathering rainwater in reservoirs.

At the center of the fountain are statues, including that of Neptune, god of the sea which he can just about see from his vantage point. Originally, the aqueduct ended in a cave with statues. This redo with Neptune, 2 nymphs, and a dolphin is from the 18th century. Statues in Dubrovnik gardens were integrated with their fountains and never stood alone.

Dubrovnik fountains usually spewed their water through masks placed on niches of the garden wall, unlike this full statue here at this upscale villa. The main reason for this was that the garden walls would be capped by channels designed to move the flow of rainwater to or from reservoirs.Because of the challenges of the terrain and lack of water, Renaissance gardens in Dubrovnik were small with an average size of just over an acre. Typically these would have only a single-axis as is the case for Trsteno which was once of the earliest Renaissance gardens in Dalmatia (and even earlier than most in Italy). However, Trsteno's garden is much larger at about 4.5 acres.

The steep slopes of the Dalmatian mountains as they reach the Adriatic usually makes the broad symmetry of the Italian garden impossible. Instead, these same slopes would provide great sea views and encourage the landscape architects to provide belvederes.

Most of the fishponds in Dubrovnik gardens are connected by channels to the Adriatic and have salt water as fresh water is often in short supply here. At Trsteno, the aqueduct brings down fresh water.Such fishponds were not only aesthetic but served as fish hatcheries and as microclimates to help cool the hot Dalmatian summer.

Italian gardens often exhibited elaborate topiary -- all but unknown to the gardens of Dubrovnik. But the biggest difference is water -- Italian gardens have lots of fresh water usually rushing through fountains. Dubrovnik gardens border the sea and have ponds of salt water. Rainwater is too precious and in too little supply to power fountains. Nearly unique to Dubrovnik, Trsteno's garden has both.

A bit of earthquake resistance incorporated into the villa walls.

Unlike the Renaissance gardens of Italy, Dubrovnik gardens often contain pergolas for vines, often leading to (and extending) the house. Typically their supporting columns would be placed on low walls which define the garden in the absence of boxwood shrubs. This use of stone walls evolved from the monastery gardens of the middle ages. Pergolas themselves are much older and date back to at least ancient Egypt.

Here we look through the belvedere pavilion to the Adriatic and the Elafiti Islands where other prominent Dubrovnik families would have their villas.

The sea here is bordered by this stone dock often referred to as the arsenal. Most Dubrovnik gardens use descending terraces to tame the slopes -- again an idea borrowed from medieval monastery gardens.

Our ship captain claimed this was Tito' 2nd home; today it rents for 7,000 Euros per night

...and the belvedere -- as if you'd have any difficulty seeing the Adriatic from this location.

caves are probably common given the limestone/karst shore

The rest of these slides are pictures of some of the fauna -- with very little captions. You probably want to click through fast or use as a screen saver.

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Sour Orange

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Yucca

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OK, it's not fauna but I thought it was interesting like a William Carlos Williams image. So much dependsupon a blue fire hydrant glazed with rainwaterbeside the white chickens.

Thanks for staying with us. See the main Dubrovnik pages by clicking here.

Thanks to Mladen Obad Scitaroci for some of the information found on these slides.

Rector's Palace Dubrovnik, Croatia

2010-01-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Rector's Palace

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visited 16 and 17 October 2009

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Prison or Palace?

This somewhat warped picture shows perhaps the most significant secular buildings on the Dalmatian coast -- the Rector's Palace. Architecture here is the inverse of history: the lower floor has a Renaissance loggia supporting beautiful Gothic windows above. The wide areas on each side of the loggia were once the base for towers -- both of which were damaged when the place suffered a fire and explosion 11 years after it was built -- to replace an earlier fortress destroyed by an ammunition explosion. Two major earthquakes also took their toll and the rebuilding of this once-Gothic building cleverly harmonizes Renaissance and Baroque elements as well. This should be called the Rector's Prison as whichever noble was serving the 30-day term could not leave the building except for official business. Each night the keys to the locked gates were brought here and turned over to him in a pompous ceremony. Despite earthquakes, fire, gunpowder explosions, and a variety of remodeling by several prominent architects, the Rector's palace maintains a harmonious exterior -- and a truly remarkable Renaissance atrium with baroque upgrades. The Rector and the Senate would sit on those stone seats to meet with supplicants. With the Cathedral (right), the Rector's Palace anchors the south end of a stubby street that leads at its north end... ...to the Sponza Palace (its arched loggia shows at the end of the street where it meets the main drag called the Stradun). Looking up, we see Mount Srd, Dubrovnik's protector from the harsh north winds (called the bura). Mount Srd (we don't need no stinkin' vowels) shows traces of the fort the French built when Napoleon's guys were invited in and wouldn't leave. In 1991, the Serbs shelled from up there and destroyed the cable car that used to take tourists to its summit, over 1300 feet high. Events have conspired to destroy this building as well; rebuilding has changed its exterior dramatically. The front (west) originally had towers that disappeared in a 1463 explosion. The facade then received its upper Gothic windows over a Renaissance loggia. The south end (we see a bit of it at the right) was restored after the 1520 earthquake in the Baroque style. Severely damaged, somehow this structure survived the 1667 earthquake that leveled nearly every other building within Dubrovnik's walls.

Channeling Dubrovnik

The Loggia of mythic proportions

The fortress that once stood here was destroyed by a powder explosion in its armory. Fortunately at that time, the great Neapolitan civic builder Onofrio di Giordano della Cava was in Dubrovnik creating its water system and the two fountains that bear his name. The Senate commissioned Onofrio to replace the fortress with a towered two-story Gothic structure which was completed in 1452. Unfortunately, 11 years later, another explosion wiped out much of his efforts. (A few of his sculptural fragments have been incorporated into the building.) Note above each Renaissance arch, we see a double-mullioned Gothic window the Italians call a "bifora." Let's start our visit with an examination of the Renaissance loggia,which you might think could be the work of Michelozzo di Bartolomeo who was then 65 years old and the most popular architect in his native Florence. He was working in Dubrovnik at the time of the 1463 explosion as the chief engineer reconstructing the city's land walls. (Interchanges with Florence were frequent during the mid 1400s. Records from the 1460s show 28 Florentine craftsmen living here.) Michelozzo was asked to submit a design to repair the Rector's palace -- but the Senate rejected his Renaissance building proposal as being too modern for their conservative Gothic tastes. Michelozzo's sojourn here seems to have been greed-inspired. Dubrovnik put him on a salary 3 to 10 times what he was getting back in Florence. (His contract also stated that he was to do no manual labor.) It's no surprise he'd propose a Renaissance building -- after all if it was good enough for the Medicis of Florence, it should be good enough for this place. Shortly after his rejection, he left Dubrovnik. A succession of builders finished the repair work including Salvi di Michele who carved this half-capital at the north edge of the loggia. Opposite that sculpture at the south end, we find another half-capital, this one by Pietro di Martino and his workshop. It depicts Apollo's servant Aesculapius, the father of medicine, shown here sitting an apothecary. (By the way, Dubrovnik during its golden age had free health care from salaried physicians.) From Milan, Martino lived here for 20 years starting in 1432. This is the only original sculpture to survive the explosion that damaged the Onofrio building in its original position on the building. (A few other fragments have been moved to the interior.) The myth of Aesculapius (whose symbol is typically the two snakes wound around his stave) has a remote connection to Dubrovnik in that the city's original name was Epidauros -- and Aesculapius originated from a town in Greece with the same name. That's a bit of a stretch, but the iconography of this building suggests Dubrovnik's place in history just as the carvings on cathedrals bathe their towns in the great flow of Christian myths. Here's the other side of the Pietro di Martino's original half-capital showing what appear to be merchants engaged in trade. As we see here, capitals crown the outer row of columns. The back wall supports capitals without columns as the vaults terminate there. Let's look at some of the 5 front capitols that face the street. Here we have angels with not only wings, but genitalia. Does this settle the debate as to which sex can claim angels? (Without this evidence, who would ever suggest that angels might be male.) These angels are into the Dalmatian Coast custom of nude beaches; they are supposed to be driving Adam and Eve out of paradise but seem more concerned with posing. There seem to be ample fig leaves, but in all the wrong places. The real power in Dubrovnik lay with the Senate -- 45 members elected from the nobility. Their executive branch was a subset of 11 called the Minor Council. One of these was the Rector -- who served for one month. Citizens treasured their independence and did not want to create tyrants. The inner wall of the loggia does not have columns but rather a strange set of reliefs that hold up the vaulting. From the upper floor rise the Gothic bifora (mullioned windows) with reliefs by Pavko Antojevic Bogicevic. These bifora were also on the southern side before being replaced by baroque windows after the 1520 earthquake. Although it suffered major damage, somehow the Rector's Palace survived the great 1667 earthquake which leveled nearly every building (but not the walls) in Dubrovnik. (The lancet windows -- named after the lance tip which they resemble -- are characteristic of the bifora.)

The interior

Let's now go inside. Many of the rooms are now a museum but we'll spend the rest of these slides looking at a true masterpiece...

The Atrium

...the atrium of the Rector's Palace -- a Renaissance jewel with a baroque staircase added after the 1520 earthquake. Supposedly these stairs were used only once a month when the new Rector replaced the old. The ornamentation on the staircase contrasts with the simplicity of the stones in the small ashlar wall. Rain kept chasing us under the arches. Many of the rooms on the ground floor were used to dispense justice: as courts or prison cells. Dubrovnik strongly supported the rights of the individual -- but deemphasized the accomplishments of individual persons, fearing that adulation might lead to tyranny. Most positions of power like that of its Rector or commanders of its forts were restricted to one month terms to keep anyone from becoming too strong. In its 400 years of independence, Dubrovnik never erected a statue to a historic figure -- except here with this bronze of Miho Pracat. Pracat was a commoner (the lowest grade in the social hierarchy and forbidden from holding public office.) Yet he became rich through shipping, supported the Franciscans, and left huge amounts for charity. With the grand staircase used only for the monthly changing of the Rectors, daily movements must have been up and down this smaller of the atrium staircases. Both staircases are spectacular in their own way... ...including their hand rails. The 5 renaissance arches at the top of the atrium suggest the 5 similar arches in the entrance loggia on the western facade. These are double columned with Corinthian-like capitals. A small bell tower rises above this clock at the center of the upper level. Another view of the larger stairs This atrium is one of thirty venues used during the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, held since 1949 to feature all of the performing arts. A few architectural details of the atrium: the capitals of the upper arches are much simpler than those on the western exterior. Some of the abstract iconography on the larger stairway could use a bit of restoration. Dubrovnik's coat-of-arms seems to have a crown at its top even though this aristocratic republic was about as anti-king as could be. Power was solely in the hands of the nobles who bred so well in their closed social class that by the 16th century they numbered nearly 1500 -- and controlled all of the land. Their upper crust formed an oligarchy which ran things. But they ruled well and even the commoners were prosperous and individual rights were king -- and therefore there was little civil unrest during its 400 years of independence. More stairway reliefs Let's take a closer look at the angel that hovers over the Gothic doorway that led to the Senate chamber. Beneath a Renaissance shell half-arch and standing on a Greek-inscribed base, this undocumented International Gothic angel sculpture appears to be the work of Pietro di Martino's school as well. Like his Lady Justice, she holds a long scroll, this one extolling moral virtues. Her placement above the entrance to the senate chamber reminds senators of their ties to the Roman Senate. (The scroll echoes some Ciceronian phraseology.) When this was carved, Dubrovnik was entering its Golden Age -- but comparisons with ancient Rome (even done by the Christian icon of an angel) would still be a bit on the pretentious side. Here's another sculptural fragment damaged by the explosion to the building and moved here afterwards. It's also by Pietro di Martino da Milano and his school who did the original exterior capitals. (This one was at the main doorway). It shows the Roman goddess of Justice seatedbetween two lions and holding a scroll with perhaps laws. No blindfold and scales here, but the words carved in her scroll affirm the rights of the individual. Go figure! Even the lion below seems a bit disgusted with this bronze. Thanks for visiting. See all of our Dubrovnik slides by clicking here -- or visit all of our travel pages by clicking here.

Please join us in the following slide show to give Dubrovnik's Rector's Palace the viewing it deserves by clicking here.

Dick and Jane's Travels

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinati

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinat

Marfa, Texas

Visited 1 and 2 April, 2010

Note: click on any picture to enlarge it

Here come the Judd

Better things than chemistry

Give me land, lots of land -- don't box me in

Judd in the box

The Arena

The Incredible Lightness of Dan Flavin

The Smashing Success of John Chamberlain

Artist who have done time

Messin' with Art

The Pop art of John Wesley

The Paper Sculpture of Carl Andre

Copper by Roni Horn

Claes and Coosje -- and Louie

School No. 6 by Ilya Kabakov

Pula, Croatia

Pula, Croatia

Visited 23 October 2009

Note: click on any picture to enlarge it

From the top

Very ancient (pre)history

The Amphitheater

A museum in the basement

Gated community

The Arch of the Sergii

The artist as a young man

Europe's best Forum?

The cathedral

Meters

Split, Croatia

Split, Croatia

Visited 18 and 20 October 2009

Hvar, Croatia

Hvar, Croatia

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dalmatia's PearlDubrovnik, Croatia

Trsteno Arboretium

Trsteno Arboretum

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visited on a rainy 17 October 2009

Rector's Palace Dubrovnik, Croatia

Rector's Palace

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visited 16 and 17 October 2009

Prison or Palace?

Channeling Dubrovnik

The Loggia of mythic proportions

The interior

The Atrium

Dalmatia's Pearl

Dubrovnik, Croatia