Stradun, Dubrovnik

Interesting facts

The name Placa goes back to the Latin platea communis, a place of public life, while Stradun comes from a Venetian word for a big street.

Each ground-floor shop had a door and window under one arch; the door stayed shut and goods were handed over the sill, which served as the counter.

Before 1667 the houses on the street were far less uniform, many of them arcaded and richly decorated, much like the surviving Sponza Palace.

The 1667 earthquake that led to the street's rebuilding killed some 5,000 people and was followed immediately by a great fire.

The small Church of St Saviour on Stradun, built in 1520–1528 to give thanks for the city's escape from an earlier quake, survived 1667 intact.

The 31-metre city bell tower at the eastern end began leaning towards Stradun and was demolished in 1928, then rebuilt to its original design.

The hours are struck by two bronze figures, Maro and Baro, nicknamed the Zelenci, or green ones, for their patina; the originals of about 1478 are in the Rector's Palace.

The bell the Zelenci strike was cast in 1506 by the founder Ivan Rabljanin.

In July 2010 Goran Ivanišević and John McEnroe played an exhibition tennis match on the street in front of about 600 spectators.

Why it is worth it

Stradun is only about 300 metres long, yet it holds the whole of Dubrovnik in one straight line. The street runs across the walled city from the Pile Gate in the west to the Ploče Gate in the east, and its limestone paving, laid by the fifteenth century and worn by centuries of feet, has been polished to a sheen that turns almost mirror-like after rain or under evening lamps. Locals also call it Placa, from the Latin platea, a broad street; Stradun itself comes from the Venetian for a big street.

Its straightness is an accident of geography. The line of Stradun was once a marshy channel that divided the settlement of Ragusa from the community of Dubrava; when it was filled in during the Middle Ages, the two halves grew into one city and the reclaimed strip became its main artery. What you see along it today, though, is younger. The great earthquake of 1667 wrecked most of the town, and the Republic of Ragusa rebuilt the street under strict rules. The result is a rare harmony: two long rows of near-identical stone houses, each with arched shopfronts at street level, living quarters above, and kitchens up in the roof so that a fire would do less harm. Narrow lanes climb steeply away from it on either side, each one a slice of stone and sky.

Both ends are set pieces. By the Pile Gate stands the Large Onofrio Fountain, built as the terminus of an aqueduct begun in the 1430s, with the Franciscan monastery beside it. At the eastern end the street opens into Luža Square with its city bell tower, the Sponza Palace of 1516–1521, and Orlando's Column, carved in 1418; the Small Onofrio Fountain is nearby. The street is still the city's stage, filled every 3 February by the procession of Saint Blaise, Dubrovnik's patron saint. Walk it very early, before the day's crowds, when the stone reflects the light and you can hear your own footsteps from gate to gate.

Getting there

Stradun lies in the heart of Dubrovnik's walled Old Town. Dubrovnik Ruđer Bošković Airport (DBV) is about 16 km to the south-east. The Old Town is closed to traffic, so the street is reached on foot through the Pile Gate or the Ploče Gate.

From the encyclopaedia

Stradun or Placa, whose name derives from Venetian, and means "large road" or "wide road", is the main street of Dubrovnik, Croatia. The limestone-paved pedestrian street runs some 300 metres through the Old Town, the historic part of the city surrounded by the Walls of Dubrovnik.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Stradun, Dubrovnik

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia