Dominican Monastery

The Dominican Monastery sits at Svetog Dominika 4 in the eastern part of Dubrovnik's Old City in Croatia, next to Ploce Gate and Fort Revelin. The Dominican order settled in Dubrovnik in the 13th century, and the complex was built in stages, with the Gothic church and the monastery itself integrated into the city walls, so that the building also served a defensive purpose. The most admired architectural feature is the cloister, built in the 15th century, a Gothic-Renaissance work attributed to the Dubrovnik master builder Maso di Bartolomeo and associated with the Florentine Michelozzo, with paired columns, a central garden, a well and decorative stonework. The church, in a late Gothic style with a large nave, houses altar works and a monumental crucifix. The monastery museum holds a collection of paintings, silverwork, manuscripts and incunabula, and has an important set of works by the Dubrovnik school of painters. The museum is arranged thematically in the former rooms of the monastery and the treasury, rather than as an immersive exhibition. The library and archive document centuries of religious and scholarly life in the Republic. The complex was damaged in the 1667 earthquake, which led to changes in the church, and was restored in later periods, including after the 1991 shelling. Today the monastery is in good preservation and remains an active religious community. Visitors enter from the street, pay a small admission and can walk through the cloister, museum and the church. The setting is quiet compared with the busy main street.