Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik: What It’s Actually Like in Summer and How to Visit Without Hating It

Dubrovnik is genuinely beautiful. The marble streets of the old town, the walls above the Adriatic, the way the light hits limestone at 7am: all of it is as good as the photographs suggest. It is also the most overtouristed city in Croatia, with a population of around 40,000 managing 4 million visitors per year. Getting this right requires planning around the crowds, not pretending they don’t exist.

The Old Town

The old town within the city walls is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the reason everyone comes. The Stradun (Placa), the main marble pedestrian street, runs from the Pile Gate at the western end to the Bell Tower at the eastern end, roughly 300 metres. In the morning, before the cruise ships disgorge passengers, it’s beautiful and almost empty. By 10am in July, it’s a crowd management exercise.

The solution is vertical and temporal. The city walls can be walked in about 2 hours and offer views down into the old town that are significantly better than street level. The walls open at 8am; walk them first. The queues for the walls form by 9:30am in summer.

Lokrum Island, a ferry ride of 15 minutes from the old port, is a forested island with no permanent residents, a botanical garden, a naturist beach, and the ruins of a Benedictine monastery founded in 1023. The island is significantly quieter than the mainland for most of the day. The ferry runs half-hourly in season.

The Walls

The walls were built between the 13th and 17th centuries and have never been breached. The complete circuit is 1,940 metres long and reaches 25 metres at the highest point. Lovrijenac Fortress, just outside the Pile Gate at the west end, is a separate structure on a 37-metre cliff above the sea. Admission is included with the wall ticket (around €35). The view from Lovrijenac’s highest rampart of the Adriatic and the city together is the one most worth seeing.

The cable car from above the old town takes 4 minutes to reach Mount Srđ at 412 metres, from which the entire Dubrovnik peninsula is visible. Tickets cost around €40 return. The fort at the summit has an interesting museum covering the 1991-1992 siege of Dubrovnik, when the city came under Yugoslav People’s Army bombardment. The city sustained significant damage that was repaired before the tourist economy recovered.

Food

The restaurant economics of Dubrovnik are shaped by tourists who won’t come back and therefore can be overcharged. The Stradun restaurants are universally overpriced. Two or three streets back, the quality-to-price ratio improves considerably.

Konoba Matko, in the old town’s residential sections above the Stradun, does grilled fish and peka (meat or fish slow-cooked under a bell-like lid in the fireplace) at prices that don’t exploit the zip code. Lady Pi-Pi on Peline Street has been reliably good for years and has no view, which means it’s priced for what the food is rather than where it sits. The Dubrovnik market on Gundulićeva Poljana, a few steps off the Stradun, sells produce and regional food products every morning and has a good selection of local olive oil and wine.

D’vino Wine Bar on Palmotićeva Street is the reference point for Croatian wine by the glass; the selection focuses on Dalmatian and Istrian producers and the staff know what they’re talking about.

The Crowds: Honest Assessment

June, July, and August are genuinely difficult if you’re sensitive to crowds. Cruise ships dock at the port of Gruž, 3 kilometres from the old town, and their passengers arrive in the old town between 10am and 4pm. They leave in the late afternoon. Visiting from May 5 to May 31 or September 15 onwards gives you most of the good weather and a substantially emptier old town.

If you have no choice but summer, staying inside the walls (expensive) and being outdoors before 9am and after 6pm gets you most of what Dubrovnik has to offer without the worst of the crowd density.

Getting There

Dubrovnik Airport is 20 kilometres south of the city. The Atlas airport bus (around €6, 35 minutes) connects to the main Pile Gate bus stop in the old town. Taxis cost around €35. The airport is served from most major European airports, with easyJet, Ryanair, and Croatia Airlines all operating services.

The old town has almost no parking; the car park above the Pile Gate is the best option for those driving, but it fills by 8am in summer.