Bokar Tower

This guide to Bokar Tower in Dubrovnik opens with a puzzle: why the Republic of Ragusa summoned a sixty-five-year-old architect from Florence, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, once personal architect to Cosimo de' Medici, when younger names were available. It follows him to this cliff at the city's western gate, where cannons had made the old square tower obsolete, and into the long, contested years after his death before the design was completed. Locals call this fort Zvjezdan, starry, for the open sky still visible from its floor at night.