CC Travel Blog

After half day’s tour of Dubrovnik and the city wall walk, we spent the afternoon in the city’s museums.

We first returned to the Spanish Steps and visited the baroque style St. Ignatius Church. The altar inside is a lot more facinating.

Next we headed to the Rector’s Palace. Combo tickets are available, 2 museums for 45 kuna per person and 3 museums for 50 kunas while one museum entrance is 30 kunas already. There are many rooms in the Rector’s Palace, displaying paintings, coin collections, furnitures and the Rector’s desk. But they all look too new to me.

Dubrovnik developed its weapons starting in the 13th century. The development started with armors, shields and swords . In 1351, the first canon was forged and 49 years later bronze canon was available.

This is the Rector’s Desk.

Rector’s dining quarter.

Rector’s Palace also kept prisons in the dungeons. This one is used for heavy crime offenders.

Prisoners were allowed to work inside the cells and some of them did excellent works.

In the dungeons we also saw some exhibitions from the Dubrovnik archaeological museum such as the ancient heads statues.

We then moved onto the Sponza Palace to see the memorial of the men defending Dubrovnik during the Yogoslavia War. Between Oct 1991 to Aug 1995, more than 200 Croatian defenders throughout the entire Dubrovnik region and more than 100 civilians died. More than 33,000 people fled their homes.

Dubrovnik also had its own pharmacy, which was run by the Franciscan Monastery. Today inside the monastery, the inner part was transitioned into a pharmacy museum while the outer corner is still an operating pharmacy serving the city.

Since it is a monastery, it also displays relics.

Most museums in the city closes by 4pm so we had to rush up. In between museums stops, we went into the post office to get stamps for the post cards and discovered that the post office also sells post cards, for 1.8 kuna each only, amazingly cheap compared to the rip off price of 3 kuna from the souvenior shops! So hint hint, go to the post office first.

The last museum of the day is the Ethographic Museum or simply called Rupe. It requires some steps climbing to get to it but the exhibits interest me. It shows the husbandry stuff like fishing, cloth making from the old days of different islands in Croatia. Rupe used to be a grainery and they kept the big holes on the ground floor for display.

What interested me the most are the local costumes from different islands. I asked our guide if it is possible to arrange home stay with the local tribes and try on their costumes, he said that it is extremely hard and costly to arrange it in Croatia as the people are still very conservative and reserved to welcome guests to their villages and houses. Bummer!

Musical instruments.

Croatia is a Catholic country so they celebrate Easter whole heartedly. Easter egg painting is a long tradition.

At late afternoon, we wrapped up our museum visits and arrived at the St. Blaise Church and was pleasantly surprised that the church opened. The altar inside was glamourous.

On the heavy Bora day, at 4pm, we felt completely caught by the freezing strong wind. Similar to us, a lot of people prefer to stay inside, including the locals. They chose to hang out at the Gradskavana Cafe, on the ground floor of City Hall.

It is quite an experience in Dubrovnik. The orange roofs and the strong city walls are impressive, the city’s reputation for freedom is admirable, the Bora wind was a bonus experience and the nice hot cup of latte wrapped up our day nicely.