Maritime Museum

This guide to the Maritime Museum in Dubrovnik moves between two rooms inside Fort Saint John: the museum's ship models, navigation charts and captains' portraits tracing the Republic of Ragusa's rise as a naval power, and a hidden studio where painter Đuro Pulitika, born in 1922, worked for decades in a chamber built to watch for enemy galleys instead of catch afternoon light. It follows how his restless, personal style grew out of the blinding Mediterranean light outside his window, closer to Van Gogh's fevered brushwork than to any local school. Climb the stone stairs past the ship models to find his studio tucked in its corner.