Dubrovnik, Croatia · Europe

6 ideal things to do in Dubrovnik

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked May 30, 2025

1. 01

   Walk the city walls at first opening

   Old town; enter at Pile, Ploče or St John's Fortress·First entry of the day, or the final hour before closing

   Nineteen hundred and forty metres of circuit, sixteen towers, and twenty-five metres of drop in places on the seaward side. Ninety minutes at a march, two hours if you keep stopping, which you will, because the roofs below are a colour-coded record of the 1991 shelling — the bright orange tiles are the replacements, the faded ones survived. Go at opening. I once did the midday walk in July at thirty-five degrees out of pure stubbornness and learned nothing except that I am stubborn.

2. 02

   Cable car to Srđ and the Homeland War museum in Fort Imperial

   Mount Srđ, 412 m above the old town·Late afternoon for the light; the wind up there is not a joke

   Cable car to the summit takes three and a half minutes, and nearly everybody photographs the view over the walls and the Elafiti islands and goes straight back down. Inside the Napoleonic fort at the top is the exhibition on the 1991–95 siege, when this was the forward defensive position and very nearly fell. It is plain, unglamorous and makes better sense of the town below than any palace does. Forty minutes, and you will be quieter on the way down than you were going up.

3. 03

   Ferry to Lokrum

   Fifteen minutes from the Old Harbour·May, June or September; August afternoons are a scrum

   Benedictine monastery ruins, a botanical garden, Fort Royal on the high point, and a small saltwater lake called Mrtvo More that children hurl themselves into. The peacocks are descended from birds Archduke Maximilian shipped in from the Canaries in the 1860s and they have opinions, which they share at close range and considerable volume. Take food and give it three hours. It is Dubrovnik's Marjan: the place you go to stop being in the town for an afternoon.

4. 04

   The old pharmacy at the Franciscan monastery

   Placa, just inside the Pile Gate·At opening, while the cloister is still empty

   Founded in 1317 and still dispensing, which makes it the oldest working pharmacy in Europe and the third oldest anywhere. The museum room holds the mortars, the ceramic jars and the manuscript formularies; the counter next door still sells rose water and creams made to the monastery's own recipes. My mother has a jar of the rose cream and has told every neighbour in her building precisely where it came from. The Romanesque cloister outside is the best quiet minute inside the walls.

5. 05

   Rector's Palace, now the Cultural History Museum

   Pred Dvorom, beside the cathedral·Mid-morning, out of season

   Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque all on one facade, because the building kept being rebuilt — it housed the republic's powder magazine, and that history is not unrelated. Seat of the Rector of Ragusa until 1808, a museum since 1872. The rooms are sober rather than opulent, which fits a republic that deliberately gave its head of state a very short term and almost no personal power. Dubrovnik's entire political trick is in this building, being looked at by about eleven people.

6. 06

   Cavtat: the Bukovac house and the Račić mausoleum

   South of the city; local bus, or the boat from the Old Harbour·Half a day, with lunch on the harbour

   Vlaho Bukovac was born in this house in 1855, went to Paris, and came home to found modern Croatian painting; the museum holds over two hundred works and his own decoration still on the walls. Up the hill in the cemetery stands Ivan Meštrović's Račić family mausoleum, white Brač stone, built 1920–22 with no wood used anywhere in it. Cavtat is what Dubrovnik was before the ships arrived, and there is a headland path where you can get into the sea off the rocks without paying anybody.