As War Leaves, Tourists Return To Dubrovnik

Sunday morning church bells rang out from St. Blaise’s belfry, launching a swirling blizzard of startled pigeons over the polished white limestone streets of Dubrovnik.

A knot of German tourists clutched their cameras and ducked for cover. Unscathed and delighted, they continued their stroll amid the city’s massive medieval walls and Baroque churches.

Luksa Lucianovic, a Dubrovnik tourism official, nodded his approval. “This is very good,” he said. “You see the people are starting to come back, and they’re enjoying themselves.”

It’s been seven years since anything approaching a healthy tourist trade has come to Dubrovnik, which was swept up in the maelstrom of war in the former Yugoslavia despite its military insignificance. This summer, the first real crowds and heavy traffic in cruise ships began to return.

The recovery so far is modest, with the number of tourists 25 to 30 percent of the prewar level. Once, 80 percent of Dubrovnik’s jobs depended on tourism.

“Sometimes in the past we were praying to God that He stop this flood of tourists. Now we’re praying that it resumes,” observed a local guide.

Before violence enveloped the region, Dubrovnik was a magnet for package travelers. More than a million visitors, mostly West Europeans, would descend every year, spend an average of five or six nights and gorge on fresh, cheap seafood, plum brandy and perfect blue skies.

For sheer sparkling beauty, few places anywhere in Europe can rival Dubrovnik. With its magnificent, fortified setting on the Adriatic, its plunging, narrow stairways, its crystalline waters, statuesque cypresses and the harmony of its 17th-century architecture, the city is a gem.

That didn’t stop the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army from shelling Dubrovnik in the winter of 1991-92 during Croatia’s fight to secede from the Yugoslav federation.

Perhaps the purpose of the attack was to crush the tourist trade, a mainstay of Croatia’s economy. Perhaps it was vengefulness or envy. Whatever the motive, international condemnation shamed the Serbs into relenting.

But the wave of media attention which helped halt the destruction also gave rise to the impression that Dubrovnik had been reduced to rubble. Actually, damage was moderate. The city had been heavily sandbagged and boarded up before the shelling, and much of the damage to roofs, paving stones and balustrades was reparable. Roughly 75 percent has now been repaired.