Ploce Gate

This guide to Ploce Gate in Dubrovnik follows the nightly drawbridge that sealed off the walled city, and the 1377 quarantine law that made arrivals from plague-stricken regions wait forty days outside these walls, among the earliest such rules in Europe. It traces the penalties for breaking isolation, harsher for commoners than nobles, and the officials called kacamorti who patrolled the line while goods were aired and fumigated in the lazaretto buildings outside. A stone Saint Blaise still watches the road in from above the archway.