Fortress Imperial

This guide to Fortress Imperial above Dubrovnik opens with a puzzle: why a garrison on this ridge stopped work on 15 August 1812 to mark the birthday of a ruler who never once visited. It follows French engineers who, from 1806, spent six years hauling limestone up Mount Srđ, 415 metres above the harbor, racing to finish walls and bastions that the old Republic of Ragusa had never bothered building in four centuries of independence. It also traces the fort's later life under Austrian and Yugoslav rule, and the cable car built in 1969, wrecked in wartime and rebuilt in 2010.