Walls of Ston — city walls
Jules Verne Times Two · CC BY-SA 4.0

Walls of Ston

Stonske zidine

  • 2 min read
  • 42.838° N 17.697° E

Interesting facts

  • Ston's salt pans brought the Republic about 15,900 ducats a year, more than the 12,000 ducats the Great Wall section cost to build.
  • The main stretch across the isthmus, the Great Wall, runs for about 1,200 metres on its own.
  • Ston was laid out as a planned town of 15 equal blocks of ten houses each, with main streets six metres wide.
  • At their height the fortifications counted 10 round towers, 31 square towers and 6 semicircular bastions.
  • About half a kilometre of the wall collapsed in the great earthquake of 1667, and further quakes in 1979 and 1996 caused serious damage.
  • Since 2008 runners have raced along the ramparts in the annual STONe Wall Marathon.
  • Their length has earned them the nickname the European Great Wall of China.
  • Besides Michelozzo and Juraj Dalmatinac, the Renaissance engineer Bernardino Gatti of Parma also worked on the defences.

Why it is worth it

The Walls of Ston are one of the longest fortification systems ever built in Europe — originally more than 7 km of wall, towers and forts thrown across the narrow neck of the Pelješac peninsula in southern Dalmatia. They were built by the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) to protect a prize that made the city rich: the salt pans of Ston, which are still worked today.

Ragusa bought Ston and Pelješac from the Serbian Empire in 1333 and started work on the defences in 1358. The system was designed as a whole: a wall across the isthmus linking two planned towns, Ston on one side and Mali Ston on the other, each laid out on a regular grid and each guarded by its own fortress — the Veliki Kaštio in Ston and the Koruna in Mali Ston — with a further fort on Podzvizd hill at 224 metres. Some of the best-known builders of the Adriatic worked on it, including Michelozzo and Juraj Dalmatinac (Giorgio da Sebenico). By the 15th century the walls carried around 40 towers and five fortresses; the Field Gate in Ston bears a Latin inscription dated 1506.

After the fall of the Republic the walls were treated as a quarry: stone was carried off for schools, public buildings and even a triumphal arch for the Austrian emperor's visit in 1884, and much of the wall around Mali Ston was pulled down. Demolition stopped after the Second World War. About 5.5 km survive, with some 20 towers, and a long restoration since 2004 has made much of the circuit walkable again. Walking the ramparts up from Ston and over the hill to Mali Ston is steep but spectacular, with the salt pans that paid for it all laid out below.

Getting there

Ston sits at the root of the Pelješac peninsula, about 40 km from Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik Ruđer Bošković Airport (DBV) is the practical gateway at roughly 56 km; Mostar International Airport (OMO) in Bosnia and Herzegovina is slightly closer by straight line but means crossing a border. Walking the stretch between Ston and Mali Ston takes around 30 minutes.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Croatia 22The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Croatia 5The Most Impressive City Walls 11The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

The Walls of Ston are a series of defensive stone walls, originally more than 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) long, that surrounded and protected the city of Ston, in Dalmatia, part of the Republic of Ragusa, in what is now southern Croatia. Their construction was begun in 1358. On the Field Gate of the Walls there is a Latin inscription which dates from 1506. Today, it is among the longest preserved fortification systems in the world.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

42.83800, 17.69700per Wikidata