Events...

Dubrovnik is a tranquil cultural and tourist centre hosting many musical, art and theater events year round. The annual Dubrovnik Summer Festival is a cultural event when keys of the city are given to artists who entertain Dubrovnik's population and their guests for entire month with live plays, concerts, and games.

Ivan Gundulić (Giovanni Gondola), a 17th century Croatian writer, predicted the downfall of the great Turkish Empire in his great poem Osman. He wrote these immortal verses that are performed on every opening of the world famous Dubrovnik Summer Festival:

O, beautiful liberty, dear and sweet,
Thou heavenly gift where riches all meet,
Actual source of our glory of these hours,
The sole adornment of this grove of ours,
All silver, all gold, and our lives so dear,
Cannot recompense thy beauty so clear.

With these verses Dubrovnik major invites actors and poems to enter through main gates inside city stone walls. As a young actor Goran Višnjić played Hamlet at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. He was noticed and approved by the public at the very start of his career. The Dubrovnik Summer Festival has been awarded its first Gold International Trophy for Quality (2007) by the Editorial Office in collaboration with the Trade Leaders Club.

February 3 is the feast of Sveti Vlaho (Saint Blaise), who is the city's patron saint. Every year the city of Dubrovnik celebrates the holiday with Mass, parades, and festivities that last for several days.

Dubrovnik and its surroundings with numerous islands have a lot to offer in touristic activities for younger generations. Also popular are climbing on steep hills, hiking through the Mediterranean nature, and swimming in the clean, transparent sea.

New historical discoveries say that the usual misconception of Dubrovnik coming to be as joining of Laus island and Slav settlement of Dubrovnik is disputed by the fact that there was no island of Laus, only a peninsula, and it seems that there was a port on its location dating back to ancient history (thought to be the lost port of Heraclea).