Dubrovnik Old Town

This guide to Dubrovnik's Old Town centers on Marin Držić, the city's most beloved playwright, whose comedies filled the squares here through the 1540s and after, even though his own noble family had lost its title generations earlier. You'll follow his path from a church-organist's training in Siena to the stages around Onofrio's Fountain and the servant-hero Pomet of his masterpiece Dundo Maroje. Then, from a writing desk in Florence in 1566, Držić drafted secret letters to Cosimo de' Medici asking the Tuscan duke to intervene against Dubrovnik's own ruling Senate. Look for his bronze likeness, sculpted by Ivan Meštrović, sitting just north of the Rector's Palace he once dreamed of dismantling.