Dubrovnik, known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, occupies a favored location on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. For more than 2,000 years, the port has attracted sailors, ships, and seaborne commerce. The Dubrovnik Maritime Museum presents the city’s rich maritime history with a fine collection of artifacts, oil paintings, ship models, charts, and documents. English-speaking visitors will appreciate the translations that accompany Croatian text on exhibit labels.
The museum occupies two floors in Fort St. John, a stone structure that dominates the harbor. Its vaulted galleries follow the gracefully curved stone walls and are clean, spacious, and inviting. Through windows in the ten-foot-thick walls, visitors can enjoy excellent views of the city, harbor, and turquoise Adriatic. The museum also offers a relaxing respite from crowded Old Town, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization world heritage site.
The well-organized exhibits are grouped by historical period. Artifacts from the earliest centuries of Dubrovnik’s history show the importance of the city as a center of maritime trade. The oldest items visitors see are amphorae and a lead anchor stock from the 1st century, accompanied by a handsome 2½-foot model of a trireme.
The heavily indented Dalmatian coast encouraged trade, and this inevitably resulted in shipwrecks. Archeological exploration and recovery of objects from nearby wrecks have enriched the exhibits. Visitors will discover mass-produced trade items such as oil lamps and pots. Nearby are artifacts from a 4th-century ship that traded with North Africa and a 9th-century wreck with glassware and amphorae from Byzantium.
Dubrovnik considers the 15th and 16th centuries as its golden age of seafaring, when the port’s ships traded from Egypt to northern Europe. So extensive was Dubrovnik’s merchant fleet that it competed equally with Venice, its powerful maritime rival across the Adriatic. The exhibits from this period are rich in artifacts: navigation dividers, wine jugs, a cannon ball in its stone mold, ceramics from southern Italy, and a 16th-century compass. Well-crafted models of a Dubrovnik carrack and a galleon represent the workhorse vessels of trade. Many documents speak to the city’s interest in rules and regulations for trade. One of these is a 1557 letter, signed by Henry II of France, granting Dubrovnik ships and cargoes safety from seizure by French ships.
The supply requirements of the Crimean War (1853–56) brought renewed energy and business consolidation to the city’s maritime trade. A fine series of oil paintings showing the importance and vigor of this trade depict vessels under way in full sail or visiting foreign ports.
In addition to 19th-century ship models, name boards, and figureheads, the exhibits provide unexpected surprises: the inside lid of a sailor’s painted sea chest from 1878 is decorated with two color prints of fashionable ladies in full-length dresses. And who would have expected to see a gold pocket watch President Abraham Lincoln gave to a Dubrovnik captain for rescuing American sailors from the barque Homer in 1861?
Documents such as an 1870 stock certificate for the Dubrovnik Shipping Company reflect the economics of the city’s maritime trade. As sail gave way to steam, Dubrovnik’s ships made the transition. An 1892 oil painting depicts the coastal steamer Dubrovnik, black smoke streaming from her funnel and flags fluttering from her masts.
The shipyard at Grûz, a Dubrovnik neighborhood, built sailing vessels large and small. The traditional tools of the shipwright are here to see: adzes, augurs, drawknives, and more. Elsewhere are large models of steamships from the early 20th century, such as the steam freighter Dubrovnik and the handsome passenger steamer Kralj Aleksandar I.
The world wars crippled Dubrovnik’s fleet. In one oil painting of World War I, a Dubrovnik ship succumbs to a torpedo attack. World War II brought worse devastation. The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, and only 9 of its 41 ships survived the war.
The exhibits conclude with a series of powerful photographs of the port and its boats under bombardment and on fire during the 1991 civil war. This destruction, now 25 years past, seems far removed from today’s pleasant Dubrovnik, where colorful boats float gently at their moorings and good seafood restaurants abound.
Visitors should plan a visit of from one to two hours to fully enjoy the museum. It includes a small shop, but no food service, and is not handicapped accessible.
Dubrovnik Maritime Museum
Tvrdava Sv. Ivana
20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
Phone: (011) 385 20 321 497
www.dumus.hr/en/maritime-museum/
Hours:
3 November–21 March: 0900–1600
22 March–2 November: 0900–2200
Closed on Mondays and holidays
Admission:
Adults 40 kuna ($5.75), children below 12 free.
Seven-day ticket to nine area museums and sites, adults 100 kuna, schoolchildren and students 25 kuna.