Old Town (Stari Grad)

A look around

What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.

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Where it sits

The circle is Old Town and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.

How far is everything?

From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.

• Banje Beach5 min walk400 m
• Cable car up Mount Srđ11 min walk925 m
• Oysters & Dalmatian seafood9 min taxi2.9 km
• Gruž morning market9 min taxi2.9 km
• Lapad (beach)10 min taxi3.2 km
• Lapad Bay promenade10 min taxi3.2 km
• Copacabana Beach12 min taxi4.0 km
• The Elaphiti Islands41 min taxi13.8 km
• Trsteno Arboretum42 min taxi14.1 km

On your doorstep

What you’re living next to if you stay here.

• 1.Walk the City Walls — The mile-and-a-quarter circuit of medieval ramparts around the whole Old Town — the single best thing to do in Dubrovnik, a slow lap high above the red roofs with the blue Adriatic on the other side. Go at opening or the last hour to beat the heat and the crowds.
• 2.The Stradun — The Old Town's grand main street, a river of polished limestone worn to a shine, running gate to gate between baroque facades, churches and cafés. The stage for the whole city — walk it at night when it's floodlit and empty, and it glows.
• 4.Lokrum Island — The green island ten minutes offshore by boat — a nature reserve of pines, peacocks and a ruined monastery, with rocky swimming spots and a salt-water lagoon. The easiest escape from the crowds, and a proper half-day of shade and sea.
• 5.Fort Lovrijenac & Game of Thrones — The great sea fort on a crag just outside the walls — 'Dubrovnik's Gibraltar', and King's Landing to Thrones fans, with the Red Keep and the Blackwater filmed all around. Climb it for the drama and the head-on view back at the ramparts.
• 6.The Rector's Palace — The Gothic-Renaissance seat of the old Ragusan republic, where the elected rector governed for a single month and couldn't leave the building. Now a museum of the city's improbable history as a free merchant state — cool, columned and often quiet.
• 8.Franciscan Monastery & pharmacy — A serene Romanesque cloister just inside the Pile gate, and inside it one of the oldest working pharmacies in Europe, dispensing since 1317. A pocket of calm and old herbal potions a step off the heaving Stradun.
• 9.A Buža cliff bar — Squeeze through a hole in the sea wall (buža means 'hole') to a ramshackle bar clinging to the cliffs outside the ramparts — a cold drink, bare rock, and the open Adriatic at your feet. Sunset here is the city's best-kept ritual.
• 10.Sea kayaking round the walls — Paddle out from the little beach below Fort Lovrijenac, round the base of the ramparts and across to Lokrum, with a snorkel stop in a hidden cave. The best way to see the walls — from the water they built them to defend, ideally on a sunset tour.
• 11.Dubrovnik Cathedral & treasury — The baroque cathedral at the heart of the Old Town, rebuilt after the 1667 earthquake, with a glittering treasury of gold reliquaries — including one said to hold the skull of St Blaise, the city's protector. Free to enter, quietly grand.
• 17.Sponza Palace & the old port — A flawless Gothic-Renaissance palace on the Stradun, now the city archive, beside the tucked-away old harbour. Step in for the courtyard; it's free.