Sponza Palace

This guide to Sponza Palace in Dubrovnik moves between two crowds five centuries apart: the merchants who once haggled over pepper, silk, and wax under an inscription warning against cheating, and the noblemen of the Academia dei Concordi who gathered upstairs to trade riddles and verses for pleasure. Built between 1516 and 1522 as the customs house of the Republic of Ragusa, the palace turns out to have had more than one appetite. Stand in the courtyard at dusk, when the acoustics carry a single violin all the way to the back row without amplification.