Behind the limestone facades, Dubrovnik keeps a working art city: Titian in a monastery cloister, Croatia's oldest theatre company on Pred Dvorom, war photojournalism above Stradun, and studios in the old plague lazarettos.
Four floors of Croatian modernism inside a 1930s stone villa with sea terraces: Vlaho Bukovac's luminous portraits, the Dubrovnik colourists, and a sculpture terrace over the Adriatic. Rotating contemporary shows upstairs.
Masterpiece of Dalmatian Gothic: Maso di Bartolomeo's 15th-century cloister arcades enclose a courtyard of orange trees, while the museum holds Titian's St Blaise polyptych and Nikola Božidarević's gold-ground triptychs.
Photojournalist Wade Goddard's two-floor gallery on Antuninska: a permanent floor on the 1990s Yugoslav wars and the siege of Dubrovnik, plus a changing exhibition of conflict reportage from Ukraine, Syria or Gaza.
Andrea Pozzo's Baroque church crowns Padre Bandurov's Roman-styled staircase, an 18th-century quotation of the Spanish Steps. Inside: illusionist frescoes of Ignatius Loyola's life and Dubrovnik's Lourdes grotto replica.
Memorial museum to the Renaissance playwright who wrote Dundo Maroje in 1551. Costumes, stage models and a short film reconstruct 16th-century Ragusan comedy, still the backbone of Croatian theatre repertoire today.
Croatia's oldest continuously working theatre company performs in the 1865 Bondino kazalište on Pred Dvorom. The box office opens midday — the season runs October to June with Držić revivals and contemporary Croatian drama.
Two floors above the old port trace the Ragusan republic's merchant fleet: ship models, portolan charts, cargo manifests and the shipwreck salvage that made Dubrovnik a rival of Venice from the 14th century onward.
The sea-cliff fortress doubles as an open-air theatre each July and August for the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, most famously Hamlet staged on the ramparts. Its motto over the gate: freedom is not sold for all the gold.
A 1590 granary carved with fifteen dry grain pits in the bedrock now displays Konavle embroidery, Dubrovnik folk dress and rural tools. The stone silos on the ground floor are the exhibit locals send visitors for.
A former Jesuit chapel houses the work of three friends who defined 20th-century Dubrovnik painting — Ivo Dulčić, Antun Masle and Đuro Pulitika — whose saturated blues and reds were painted from these same streets.
A converted factory hall in the port district recreates socialist Yugoslav daily life: a 1970s living room, Tito-era propaganda posters, packaging design and interviews with people who lived through the self-management era.
The republic's 17th-century quarantine courtyards now hold artist studios, the Deša traditional crafts workshop, concerts and Lindo folk dance evenings — the working end of Dubrovnik's contemporary culture scene.