Over two decades of visits to Croatia, I must have walked these walls a dozen times. Still, in a jet-lagged haze, I climbed, again, the uneven steps near Pile Gate that lead up to the walls of Dubrovnik’s Old Town.

“I’m only doing this for you,” said Ivan Vuković, a Dubrovnik native and tourist guide whom I’ve known for years. We are not related, but, because we share a surname, we joke that we’re cousins. That Sunday evening in May, Ivan explained that elementary school children are required to climb the Old Town walls, and, after that first climb, most locals never want to go back. “Kakav sam turist ovdje,” he joked to another local, who was immersed in a book on her terrace below. “What a tourist I am here.”

Built in the 13th through 17th centuries, Dubrovnik’s walls protected the city from invaders such as the Venetians. The stone was sourced from a limestone quarry, Dubac, near Brgat village on the other side of the hill; the original mortar contained seaweed, eggshells, and sand from the nearby Neretva River. Rumor has it that during the Middle Ages—when the city’s authorities deemed it necessary to build thicker walls, due to the potential threat of Ottoman invasion—every person who entered the Old Town had to bring a stone in proportion to their size, “to help the government build part of the stone walls,” Vuković told me.

Today, the majestic 1.2-mile-long walls still encircle the Old Town, providing a bird’s-eye view of terra-cotta rooftops. Seventy-five percent of the tiles have been replaced due to mortar damage after the war in the former Yugoslavia, and the new UNESCO-approved tiles are from Tolouse, France. The Old Town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.

On the top of the walls, I stopped to admire the panoramic views of the Adriatic Sea.

The walls of the Old Town consist of three fortresses—Bokar, St. John, and Minčeta—as well as towers, bastions, and other fortifications. Located in the Old Town Port, the Maritime Museum is housed in the 15th-century Fortress of St. John (so, too, is an aquarium). Here, according to Ivan, visitors can “cool off a bit and learn more things about the history of Dubrovnik through the commerce and sea trade, as this was a maritime republic.” As the Republic of Ragusa, Dubrovnik ruled itself as a free state for nearly five centuries, partly thanks to its prosperity from its maritime trade and its diplomacy.

As we walked the northern section of the city walls, Vuković pointed out Jewish gravestones that are integrated into the walls themselves. “There was a Jewish graveyard on the other side of the wall, because there was a Jewish quarter,” he said. “They wanted to defend [the city] more, and they put the tombstones on the top of the wall.” Authorities deemed it necessary that the tombstones were used to fortify the walls for better protection, as there was a lack of stone during that time. The aristocracy had a motto: obliti privatorum, publica curate (think about the public interest, not about the private one). Dubrovnik has the oldest active Sephardi synagogue in the world, and the second-oldest European synagogue. “Through the Inquisition, most of the Jewish population arrived in the city,” he said. “They found refuge in the area of Dubrovnik.”

On the top of the walls, I stopped to admire the panoramic views of the Adriatic Sea. Below, a basketball court abutted the walls, and kids were shooting hoops.

Two large freestanding fortresses were especially important in protecting the Old Town. Revelin is an irregularly shaped quadrilateral fort situated near the eastern walls; today, the building houses the archeological collection of Dubrovnik, while the top part is one of the most popular nightclubs in the city. The steadfast sentinel Fort Lovrjenac (Fort of St. Lawrence) perches on a 121-foot-high cliff above the sea, across from the western walls of the Old Town. Vuković pointed out that Fort Lovrjenac’s own walls were of varying size: its 12-meter-thick wall facing the sea was a buffer designed to protect the city against Venetian maritime attacks; meanwhile, the wall facing the city is substantially thinner. Today, Lovrjenac is used during the summer festival as a Shakespearean stage. Featured above the entrance to the Fort is a carved 13th-century Latin inscription: non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro (freedom should not be sold for all the gold in the world).

In the fading light, I admired lines of billowing laundry strung between buildings, an old method of drying clothes called tiramoli. “When you live within the city walls, there is no privacy. Everyone can see your underwear hanging from the rope,” I heard another tourist guide say. “In the past, these little ropes were used as a net—in case you miss something in your house, you would just call your neighbor on the other side through the window and ask for something that you needed, so she would put it on that rope. Also the love messages,” she added. “Everything was shared on this traditional net.”

On a farewell visit, I walked the walls again, fighting hordes of tourists who were bottlenecked on the narrow walkways. One year the mayor threatened to limit the number of people in the Old Town to six thousand, but the crowds persisted. Dubrovnik, like Venice, faces the challenges of overtourism. The Pearl of the Adriatic beckons like a siren, drawing visitors from around the world—as it has done throughout the ages.

Kristin Vuković is the author of the novel The Cheesemaker’s Daughter, which is set on Croatia’s island of Pag. 

Featured-image photograph: A view of Old Town from the city walls. Courtesy of the author.