Dubrovnik #10

Our guidebook suggested that walking the perimeter of Dubrovnik's Old Town along the high walls which enclose it would take around an hour, or longer if a cruise ship is in port and the crowds are heavy. We found it could easily take a lot longer with very few people up there with us to interrupt the imagination. 

The cliff-top walls reach as high as 25 meters. At one point in its history, all the city's capable citizens were made to reinforce the walls and build an additional exterior fortress based on rumors of a coming war between the Ottomans and western powers. What must it have been like to live in such a highly civilized merchant city surrounded by the ever-present threat to its existence that made such walls necessary? 

Much more recently (16 years ago), what was it like when the city's fortifications protected it's citizens once again during the siege by the former Yugoslav Army when a steady rain of shells fell for half a year? The variations in roof tile colors seen today hint at the experience. Somehow even more moving than this sight is that of the cable car towers running up the mountainside above the city. While Dubrovnik is becoming quite popular with tourists once again, the empty poles are all that remain of this once popular overlook ride.