Sponza Palace
A stone arch inside warns every merchant: "When I measure goods, God measures with me."
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Dubrovnik offline.
Surviving the 1667 earthquake without damage, this Gothic-Renaissance palace built 1516–1522 has been a customs house, mint, armoury, bank, and literary academy. It now holds the State Archive — more than 100,000 manuscripts, the oldest from 1022 — inside an atrium that once served as the city's open-air trading floor.
What to look for
- The Latin inscription carved into an arch that warned traders God would audit their weights alongside them
- The loggia and facade sculptures crafted by the brothers Andrijić and their stonecutters
- The inner courtyard, Ragusa's former merchant meeting place, now a Dubrovnik Summer Festival performance venue
Fronts Luža square in the Old Town; the atrium is an active festival venue, so check the Dubrovnik Summer Festival calendar before visiting.
Sponza Palace 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.
- Franciscan Church & MonasteryThe 1667 earthquake flattened the church. One portal from 1498 made it through — and carved into it is a miniature of everything that didn't.
- Fort Lovrijenac (St. Lawrence Fortress)The fort Dubrovnik built in three months — just to stop Venice from ever owning the city.