One of the highlights of a visit to Dubrovnik is a walk along the famous Stradun.

The Placa or Stradun
The Placa, or Stradun as it is better known, is Dubrovnik’s main thoroughfare and the favourite meeting place for its inhabitants. This is where all the popular processions and festivities take place. It is also the main shopping street in the old part of the city. This street, the most beautiful and widest in Dubrovnik, clearly divides the old city centre into its northern and southern parts and is also the most direct route between the city’s western and eastern gates.

Stradun or Placa
The Placa is located on the site of the narrow arm of the sea that once separated the locality on the Laus islet from the locality on the mainland and which had been filled in by the XIᵉ century. It was at the end of the XIIᵉ century that the Placa acquired its true function when the two communities were united by a single wall into a single urban complex.

The name Placa or Stradun
The name Placa derives from the Greek and Latin platea, which we translate as street. The other name, Stradun, comes from the Venetians. The name Stradun has a pejorative connotation and means a very large, narrow and unattractive street. Of course, Stradun isn’t very big because the city government had to limit the number of visitors to the city centre. The Stradun is considered one of the most beautiful streets in the world and surely it is not hall. In the XVᵉ century, as soon as the Stradun was paved the Senate of the Republic passed a law that the Stradun street must be cleaned every night.

The appearance of Stradun changed several times over the centuries.

In its current state, the Placa dates back to the period after the great earthquake of 1667.
With the Statute of the City in 1272, the final urban plan of the city and its main streets was put in place. The uniform Baroque architecture of the houses on Placa, with space for shops on the ground floor that have “na koljeno” (kneeling) style doors, was given the appearance it has today in the reconstruction of the city after the earthquake in 1667, when several Gothic and Renaissance buildings were destroyed.

In its current state, the Placa dates back to the period after the great earthquake of 1667, when the city was rushed into reconstruction after the devastation caused by the earthquake and the fires that followed. The sumptuous and picturesque palaces of the pre-earthquake Placa were replaced by architecturally more unified and simpler buildings, Baroque houses of the same height, with similar facades and the same layout.

Stradun or Placa shines with purity
The Senate of the Republic of Dubrovnik ordered the construction of similar shops on the ground floor of the houses, reflecting the authorities’ concern for the development of trade. Despite the modesty of this new architecture, the Placa is a marvellous reflection of the harmony and rhythm of the white surfaces, which have a very dignified appearance.