Stradun (Placa)

The Stradun is the main street of Dubrovnik's old town, running 300 metres of gleaming limestone from the Pile Gate in the west to the old port in the east. It is not quite like any other main street in Europe — the surface is polished smooth by centuries of footsteps, the facades on both sides are perfectly uniform, and on summer afternoons it fills to capacity with visitors moving slowly between the gates.

Walk it early in the morning or in the evening when the crowds have thinned and the limestone takes on a golden colour in the low light. The buildings along the Stradun house cafes at street level and apartments above; the lanes that branch off it on both sides — steeper on the northern side, shallower to the south — lead to churches, squares, and viewpoints that are all within a few hundred metres.

things to do sight
A story
After the great earthquake of 1667, which killed more than a thousand people and destroyed much of the old town, Dubrovnik rebuilt the Stradun in a deliberate policy of uniform facades: every building on the street was required to present the same height, the same stone, and the same arched ground-floor openings. The result was not medieval organicism but an early exercise in urban planning — Baroque regularity imposed on a Gothic city.