Visiting Dubrovnik City Walls

Dubrovnik is famous for it’s city walls. Entering the city walls, through Ploce or Pile Gate to gain entry to old town Dubrovnik, is free. Walking the city walls is chargeable, but well worth doing. The walls were originally built as a fortification to protect the city, but are now one of Dubrovnik’s main tourist attractions, and a great way to get a different perspective of the city. They’re also home to some scenes from Game of Thrones, if that’s of interest to you.

Dubrovnik City Walls

The walls are accessed at periodic entry points around the walls. You can buy a ticket online in advance, or buy on the day, which is what we did – from memory it cost about £25 per person, but this also includes entry to Fort Lovrijenac. We started our tour at the entrance nearest to Ploce Gate, and were immediately greeted with lots of steep stone steps. There was moaning and groaning from ourselves and other visitors, especially a group of 5 women just ahead of us with epic hangovers – they got to the top and were already talking about turning round and leaving!

Top tip: try to avoid the heat of the day and take refreshments. There’s very little shelter or cover from the sun up on the walls. There are a couple of cafes which get very busy but aside from that you’re very exposed. We actually changed our plans and brought our visit forward a day to take advantage of some cloud cover, but that soon burned away and it was hot!

Here come the pictures!

Dubrovnik City Walls

There’s a one way system in operation on the walls, which helps to keep people moving and avoid awkwardness on some of the narrower steps. It makes life a lot easier! You can see the throng of people on the picture above, bottom left. It isn’t that crowded all the way around; it thins out as the paths widen and people amble at different speeds.

Because the walls circle the whole city you’ll get views of all vistas – across the red tiled roofs of Old Town, over to Ploce, up to Mt Srd and seawards to Lokrum Island and the horizon.

Dubrovnik City Walls - view from Minceta Tower
View from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik City Walls

The picture below is looking back towards Minceta Tower, which was a filming scene in Game of Thrones. The base of Minceta Tower was used as the exterior of House of Undying in the town of Qarth. You can climb up the narrow stone staircase to the top for views over the city.

View of Minceta Tower, Dubrovnik City Walls

Over the water you can see Fort Lovrijenac, which was the filming location for the Red Keep in Kingslanding, for you Game of Thrones fans! Entrance to the Fort is included in the ticket for the walls, but we never got round to getting there. We’d climbed quite enough steps!

View of Fort Lovrijenac from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Fort Lovrijenac from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Fort Lovrijenac from Dubrovnik City Walls
View of Fort Lovrijenac from Dubrovnik City Walls

I’ll leave you with some facts and figures about Dubrovnik City Walls

The walls are 1,940 metres long; forming one continual structure. They reach a maximum height of around 25 metres in certain areas. The majority of the land facing walls measure between 4 and 6 metres in thickness. The sea-facing parts are less wide; measuring between 1.5 metres and 3 metres in width. The walls welcome over 1 million visitors each year – a number that is continuing to grow thanks to Game of Thrones, and increasing numbers of cruise ships which dock there over the summer months. Old Town Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and has been since 1979.

Have you been to Dubrovnik? Let me know in the comments!

You may also enjoy:

3 days in Dubrvonik

A trip to Lokrum Island

Thanks, as always, for reading! x

A day trip to Lokrum Island, Dubrovnik

We could see Lokrum island from the terrace of our apartment when we went to Dubrovnik last year (read more about it here). We watched boats sailing across the short stretch of sea from the harbour, we saw people sea kayaking towards it and we did a loop of the island in our speed boat trip on the first afternoon.

The next step was to actually get on to the island and explore it for ourselves!

Passenger ferries run from the mainland harbour on a regular basis, and the cost is very reasonable (I’m being vague here because I can’t remember, it’s been almost a year since we were there and I’ve been a lax blogger in posting about it!). The journey takes 10-15 minutes and is very popular, so if you have a specific timescale in mind, make sure you get there early (similarly for the return journey, people queue in advance).

Lokrum is a National Park

Similarly to old town Dubrovvnik, Lokrum was used as a filming location for Game of Thrones – many of the scenes in the city of Qarth were filmed there (then heavily CGI’d, so it’s not obviously recognisable).

There’s a small GoT exhibition, which is mainly in Croatian, but you do get to sit on a replica of the Iron Throne, which is kinda fun!

Outside of that there are some attractive benedictine monastery ruins, a botanical garden (which was past its best, tbh), free roaming peacocks and rabbits and an inland Dead Sea which many people swim in (which was VERY cold and VERY awkward to get into because of the rocks underfoot).

Sea swimming is also very popular, and there are nudist areas around the coastline, if that tickles your fancy!

Lokrum island is a national park, and no-one is allowed to stay overnight – the island is vacated by 7.30 every evening. It’s very green and relaxing, but there isn’t an awful lot to do there. It’s definitely worth a visit, as long as you have the right expectations (or just want to chill out and do nothing!)

As I said in my previous post, Dubrovnik is a very beautiful city and one that I would recommend to anyone. It would be daft not to visit Lokrum unless you were desperately short of time, and the ferry journey also gives you a different view of the city looking back into the old harbour.

Have you been to Dubrovnik?

Thanks, as always, for reading! x

3 days in Dubrovnik

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As I gear up for my next holiday, I realised I haven’t blogged about my last trip, to Dubrovnik. It’s not like I haven’t had time or anything. The trip was 2 months ago and I’ve been off work for 5 weeks now <<sore point>>. But I didn’t so I’m going to correct that fact and tell you about it now.

I’m not sure when and why going to Dubrovnik became one of my travel priorities. It was definitely already right up there back in April 2016 when I wrote a list of places I wanted to visit. The architecture, city walls and coastal location made it a really appealing city break. Dubrovnik is small enough to get around in a few days. That said, there’s enough to do and see to fill the time and feel the city. Of course, later we started watching Game of Thrones, some of which is filmed in Dubrovnik, and my interest was piqued.

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The 5 most pressing destinations on my travel bucket list

Like many people I have a list of “must see” places as long as my arm, and the desire to see as many of them as possible is ever present!

Travel quote

I tend to take the opportunity to travel as it presents itself – perhaps there’s a good deal, or a cheap flight, for example. But there are some places that have my head and heart and remain ever present, no matter where else I may go meanwhile.

Santorini

Santorini

This has been on my list for a long time, at least the 11 years the husband and I have been together. We bonded over a love of castles and travel during the time we were “seeing each other” and deciding whether to throw our eggs into the relationship basket, and we used to look at pictures of Santorini and talk about wandering through white washed streets and watching golden sunsets. We’re currently right on the verge of booking it for this year, but we’re holding out for a chance we might get to go to our very favourite getaway from it all resort on mainland Greece, so maybe it will slip through our fingers until next year.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong

I crave to go East so much, but the husband isn’t very keen. One of these days maybe I’ll take off Shirley Valentine style and tour Asia alone. Except I won’t. Anyway, Hong Kong. I have some Virgin airmiles that were due to expire, so I had a mooch around the Virgin Atlantic website and was surprised to see how relatively cheap it is to get to Hong Kong. So I looked into it further and it just looks amazing. Then I spoke to my Dad who confirmed that it is amazing. Cosmopolitan, lots to see, great food and of course the Eastern culture. So this one is high on the list and, if I get my way, we’ll go there next year.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Another place that has always kind of interested me, again my interest was piqued when I noticed some very cheap flights. The city looks so pretty with the canals and the architecture and the parks, and I really want to go. In December and January they have a festival of lights which looks incredible, so I might tell suggest to the husband that we ditch the oodles of Christmas presents we usually buy for each other and use the money for a long weekend in Amsterdam instead.

India – The Golden Triangle and Goa

Golden Triangle 2

India is a dream destination for me; the history, the colours, the culture and the flavours. I’d go there in a heartbeat. Again the husband is reticent. He worries about getting a bad stomach and a lot of unwanted attention (if you read my throwback post on Marrakech you’ll know what I mean – when you look very different to the locals, as he does with blonde hair and tattoos, people tend to stare and sometimes touch! Not in a bad way, but he doesn’t like it). As much as I would like to go to Goa, with it’s street markets, warm seas and whites sandy beaches, my first choice would be the Golden Triangle tour of Jaipur, Agra and Delhi. Seeing the Taj Mahal would be overwhelming, and the Pink Palace and Amber Fort would be so amazing. Of course it would make sense to add a few relaxing days in Goa on at the end…2 birds in one!

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik

I went to Croatia about 9 years ago and was struck with the friendliness of the people, the beautiful weather, the flora and fauna and the visual history that’s a reminder of the Yugoslavian war, with abandoned buildings and bullet marks. Dubrovnik just looks amazing, with it’s medieval city walls and amazing architecture. Perfect for a city break or a pre-cursor to a longer trip taking in the coastline and national parks, it’s right up there on my list.

Where in the world is on your must do list?

Thanks, as always, for reading! x