Cavtat

This guide to Cavtat, on the coast near Dubrovnik, opens with a bell tolling over the town's highest hill in October 1922, as three coffins are carried up to a still-unfinished chapel. It traces back to the ship owner Ivo Racic and his two children, lost within days of each other to the Spanish flu three years earlier, and to his widow's decision to commission the young sculptor Ivan Mestrovic for a monument meant to outlast grief itself. Along the way it visits the earlier chapels that stood on the same hilltop, including one dedicated to a saint invoked against plague. Stand at the base of the hill and look up at the white stone dome before starting the climb.