Old Harbor Quays and Medieval Arsenal

Why is it significant?

Step onto the sunny flagstones of Dubrovnik's Old Harbor, the legendary maritime basin that served as the commercial and naval beating heart of Ragusa for seven centuries.

Key Facts

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Step onto the sunny flagstones of Dubrovnik's Old Harbor, the legendary maritime basin that served as the commercial and naval beating heart of Ragusa for seven centuries. Before you rise the massive vaulted stone portals of the medieval Arsenal, built in the twelfth century and enlarged by master Paskoje Miličević in the late fifteenth century. Within these four vaulted halls, shipwrights constructed and repaired the state's military galleys.

In the sixteenth century, tiny Ragusa commanded one of the largest ocean-going merchant marines in the world, numbering over two hundred massive ships. Ragusan galleons sailed to England, Flanders, Spain, India, and the Americas. The city's maritime fame was so profound that the English language adopted the name Ragusa to create the word argosy, meaning an immense merchant ship laden with riches.

Ragusan shipbuilding engineering was considered a vital state secret: the exact proportions, hull curves, and oak joinery techniques developed by local masters were protected by severe laws, and leaking ship blueprints to foreign powers was classified as high treason punished by execution. Each of the four massive vaulted slipways could accommodate the simultaneous construction of fifty-meter warships, protected from hostile weather and prying eyes. The heavy timber beams used for ship framing were harvested from carefully managed state oak forests in the Pelješac peninsula, where cutting down timber without senate permission was severely punished under maritime law.

Today the Arsenal houses a vibrant cultural restaurant and cafe, where visitors relax beneath soaring stone arches where great ships once took shape. The air smells of salt water, aged pine resin, and fresh espresso. Wooden boats sway gently along the stone quays as gulls circle overhead, evoking the triumphant era when Ragusan mariners crossed uncharted oceans under the banner of Saint Blaise.

Walk eastward along the water's edge out onto the sweeping stone breakwater of Porporela.