Dubrovnik's StradunStradun and Dubrovnik city walls No matter which gate you use to enter the Old City, Stradun or Placa is the central street of Old Dubrovnik. It’s the main route and the place where you can best feel the 'pulse of the city', the favorite promenade walk of all Dubrovnik citizens, young and old, as well as of all tourists coming from all over the world. Nobody can miss walking along the Placa as you will be poorer for a memorable experience and contact with the city.
Pile Gate, the entrance to Placa street This main Dubrovnik artery is a fairly wide street whose smooth cobbled surface is walked over by thousands of tourists throughout the year. Once it was under the sea, it use to be a sea channel, dividing the two settlements upon which the city was founded in the early Middle Ages. Its present look dates after the devastating earthquake in 1667 when the main street was reconstructed. The second time Placa was damages during the Serbs bombardments in 1991 when numerous missiles heavily damaged this cobblestone street.
The Onofrio fountain
On the left, when one enters the Placa from the Pile Gate, is the beautiful Renaissance church of the Holy Saviour (Sveti Spas), about which it is said that the women of Dubrovnik, both plebeian and patrician, carried the stones for its erection and strengthened the mortar with milk and egg whites. In any case, this church withstood the earthquake of 1667, which destroyed over three-fourths of the City, surviving it without any damage.
Placa, the main street On the right we can see a splendid polygonal fountain, called Onofrio's Large Fountain, after its architect. On the eastern end of the Stradun there is a second fountain, Onofrio's Small Fountain, carved by the sculptor Pietro di Martino in 1442 according to designs made by the engineer Onofrio de la Cava of Naples. At the very end of the Placa, on its north-east side, the most splendid profane building, the Sponza palace, built in the period from 1516 to 1521.
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