Franciscan Church & Monastery
The 1667 earthquake flattened the church. One portal from 1498 made it through — and carved into it is a miniature of everything that didn't.
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The Gothic portal is the only element to survive the earthquake that destroyed the church. St. Jerome stands there holding a small model of the pre-earthquake building. Inside, the lower cloister runs 120 columns long with 12 pilasters, every capital carved differently — geometric, plant, human, animal figures. The library holds 1,200 manuscripts and a pharmacy inventory dated 1317. The poet Ivan Gundulić is buried beneath the floor.
What to look for
- The portal lunette: St. Jerome holds a miniature model of the church as it stood before 1667
- The lower cloister's 120 columns — walk the full length and compare the capitals, no two are the same
- The marble pulpit inside the nave, one of the few original fittings to survive the earthquake
On the Placa near Pile Gate — you pass the portal the moment you enter the old town.
Franciscan Church & Monastery is one of 12 sights worth the detour in Dubrovnik, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Dubrovnik pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Dubrovnik
- Walls of DubrovnikWalk an unbroken 1,940-metre circuit of medieval stone — up to 25 metres above the old city — that held Ragusa independent for centuries.
- Rector's PalaceFour disasters over two centuries — fire, a gunpowder explosion, and two earthquakes — rebuilt this palace each time in a different style and left the evidence in plain sight.
- Dubrovnik CathedralA Baroque church rebuilt from the rubble of Dubrovnik's 1667 earthquake — its foundations partly funded by Richard the Lionheart, who owed a votive for surviving a shipwreck off Lokrum on his way home from the Third Crusade.
- StradunEvery building on this 300-metre limestone street was rebuilt to a government blueprint after the 1667 earthquake — and it shows.
- Sponza PalaceA stone arch inside warns every merchant: "When I measure goods, God measures with me."
- Fort Lovrijenac (St. Lawrence Fortress)The fort Dubrovnik built in three months — just to stop Venice from ever owning the city.