The latest episode of Bookworm’s Travels
We spent the day in and around Dubrovnik, in Croatia, on the northeastern edge of the Adriatic, roughly across the waters from Venice.
If you like your history old, Dubrovnik is the perfect place to visit, because it is a gem-like medieval walled city. The current version of the city started in the 12th century and continued for 500 years. This means that the Old City is a wondrous amalgam of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, all jumbled together higgledy-piggledy on the edge of the bluer than blue Adriatic.
If you like your history a bit more modern, cast your mind back to 1991, when post-Tito Yugoslavia exploded into ethnic violence. It turned out that the ethnic rivalries that had characterized the region for centuries hadn’t died under Tito’s iron rule, they’d merely been festering, waiting to erupt.
The Bosnians Serbs, who live just over the hill from the Croats, launched a full-scale attack against Dubrovnik, which was defended only by a hillside fort that Napoleon had built during his occupation. On the sea side, of course, there was nothing to stop the Serbs, who had co-opted at least some of the ships from
Yugoslavia’s navy, from bombarding this exquisite historic town.
As multiple exhibits in the town show, and as I remember from the nightly news, Dubrovnik suffered mightily during the siege. The city lost water and power. The Old City sustained hundreds of hits from grenades, missiles, and bullets. In addition to crimes against humanity, the Bosnian Serbs also committed crimes against history.
The Old City has repaired most of the damage, but the hillside fort and a series of luxury hotels remain as they were at the time. The fort has been tidied up a bit to become a museum, but the hotels — fancy places that used to house Tito and his cronies, look as if they sustained their its only yesterday. For the first time, the kids saw exactly what war does to buildings, and could imagine what it does to people.
Interestingly, the convulsions of 20 years ago seem to have leeched out much of the animus that drove them in the first place. Our taxi driver told us that relationships between the five (or is it seven?) nations that were once Yugoslavia are completely harmonious now. Although he’s a Croat who lived through the siege, he takes his family to Bosnia Herzegovina (a 20 minute drive) when they want a delicious, cheap restaurant meal.
On a completely different subject, Dubrovnik also has (so they say) the oldest still-functioning synagogue in Europe. It’s barely functioning, since Dubrovnik has only 45 Jews and cannot makeup a minyan, but visiting rabbis still come and periodically conduct services there. As best as I can tell without real Internet access, a significant portion of the pre-war Jewish population perished in Hitler’s camps.
The synagogue is a small, but perfect, example of 16th century Sephardic construction, with wooden seats built into the walls on the room’s perimeter. Upstairs is the women’s section, which has big windows,allowing for very pleasant ventilation. It was quite moving to visit the synagogue, since Hitler managed so effectively to destroy almost all the old synagogues in Europe.
Tomorrow we visit Corfu. As with Dubrovnik, I’ll enter the town with an open mind, ready to learn about it.
