Who ruled Dubrovnik?

Dubrovnik occupies a rocky promontory on the southern Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, beneath the limestone ridge of Mount Srđ. Known for most of its history by its Latin and Italian name, Ragusa, it was for more than four centuries the capital of a small merchant republic that kept its independence between far larger powers by diplomacy, trade and tribute. The maps on this site show it changing hands among neighbouring states, but for much of that time Ragusa governed itself.

According to tradition the town was founded in the 7th century by Romanised refugees from Epidaurum, the Roman city at nearby Cavtat, which was destroyed during the Avar and Slav invasions. They settled on a small rocky island, while Slavs built a village on the mainland opposite. The narrow channel between them was later filled in, and the line of that channel became the Stradun, the city's main street. Ragusa grew under the protection of the Byzantine Empire, which defended it against an Arab siege in the 9th century.

After the Fourth Crusade, Ragusa came under the overlordship of the Republic of Venice from 1205. The Treaty of Zadar in 1358 transferred its allegiance to the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, whose distant kings demanded little. In practice Ragusa was now a self-governing aristocratic republic, led by a rector who held office for only a month at a time so that no single noble could gather power.

Ragusan ships carried goods across the Mediterranean, and its merchants held privileged trading rights deep in the Balkans, where they dealt in silver, lead, salt and wool. As the Ottoman Empire conquered the surrounding lands in the 15th century, the republic agreed to pay the sultan an annual tribute in return for protection and access to Ottoman markets, a bargain that kept it free for more than three hundred years. The city built its massive walls, set up one of Europe's earliest quarantine stations in 1377, and banned the slave trade in 1416.

On 6 April 1667 an earthquake destroyed much of the city and killed more than 5,000 people. Ragusa was rebuilt, largely in the restrained Baroque style seen today, but it never regained its earlier wealth. The end came during the Napoleonic Wars: French troops entered the city in 1806, and in 1808 Marshal Marmont abolished the republic.

The Congress of Vienna awarded Dubrovnik to the Austrian Empire in 1815, and it remained under the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, when it joined the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. In 1979 the old town was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. When Croatia declared independence in 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army and Montenegrin forces besieged Dubrovnik from October 1991 to May 1992, and shelling on 6 December 1991 damaged many historic buildings. The city was restored in the following decade. Today Dubrovnik is a city of about 40,000 people in Croatia whose economy depends heavily on tourism.