Dubrovnik City Walls

This guide to the Dubrovnik City Walls follows a republic so wary of its own nobles that it gave each wall commander just thirty days in the post before rotating him out. You'll hear how that same suspicion shaped the city's defenses after Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, when Dubrovnik brought in the Florentine engineer Michelozzo to rework its fortifications, then called in the mason Juraj Dalmatinac to finish the job. It also traces the paid mercenaries hired to cover the gaps nobles' short terms left behind. Look closely at the stonework as you walk it, much of it never credited to the hands that cut it.