Dominican Monastery

This guide to the Dominican Monastery in Dubrovnik starts with a staircase balustrade that simply stops partway down, a deliberate piece of stonework, and follows the same practical thinking through a friary built directly against the city's own fortifications to double as a second line of defense. Inside, local stonemasons, among them men named Utišenović and Grubačević, spent from 1456 to 1483 carving the triple-arched cloister from a Florentine architect's drawings. At the center sits a well that has drawn water here since the 1300s, still working today. Look closely among the carved capitals for the face the architect is said to have hidden there, complete with a toothache.