The walled city of Dubrovnik sits alongside the Adriatic. Photo / iStock
The walled city of Dubrovnik sits alongside the Adriatic. Photo / iStock
On the cobbled streets of Dubrovnik, Winston Aldworth marvels at one of the world's prettiest cities.
When they were casting for the prettiest star in their hit telly show, the producers of Game of Thrones picked a winner with Dubrovnik.
The Adriatic city plays the part of King's Landing in the HBO series. Strolling down St Dominika Street, in the footsteps of Cersei Lannister, you're walking the same path trod by actor Lena Headey. Cersei had been a bad lass, and - in the bawdy, shag-a-thon world of GoT - the punishment for her incest-themed infidelity was to walk naked through the city.
Back in the real world, the real locals of this real city are less keen on public nudity. Filming of Cersei's nude walk had to be shifted away from the Catholic Church of St Nicholas, the management of which take a dim view on "acts of public immorality". They've always been a bit coy about human flesh in Dubrovnik. It's no small irony that her walk of shame took Cersei past the steps of the city's Dominican Monastery. The church was built in 1390, making it as old as Dubrovnik's famed walls.
The balustrades along the side of the steps leading up to the house of worship are slightly raised to make sure that no rogues could catch a glimpse of a woman's ankle as the went to chapel. Heaven knows where a bit of ankle spotting could lead. You might - gasp - start to imagine a woman's shin!
Up the coastline a bit, Trsteno and the ancient city of Split have also been used as sets, but Dubrovnik - a postcard-perfect mediaeval city perched among clifftop pine forests with stunning sea views - is the big winner. The historic city had record visitor numbers last year, with fans of the show from around the world boosting trade. But Dubrovnik was never a hard sell.
Long before the arrival of GoT, the thing to do in Dubrovnik was to walk the walls. If you set a cracking pace, you could probably knock off the whole walk in 45 minutes. It's the photos that drag it out to a two-hour plus endeavour. Everywhere you look, there's a stunning angle, either out over the azure waters of the Adriatic, inwards over the rust-burnt orange of the city's rooftops or along the 700-year old rockwalls themselves. Before long, you're kicking yourself for progressing so slowly - why did I muck about getting that photo 300m back there, when the best angle down that cobbled street is clearly from right over here?
The city is famed for its stunning stonework. Photo / Insight Vacations
The place is such a picture-perfect postcard, you can't help imagining that the original architects and town planners had a good understanding of the future needs of the modern tourist industry. George Bernard Shaw called it "paradise on Earth".
In some parts the walls are 22m high and 6m thick - enough to deter the sternest invaders and stun the most cynical tourists.
When you're done with the city walls, it's easy to get lost in the labyrinthine Old Town. But be warned, away from the main thoroughfares, Dubrovnik would be hard going for anyone with mobility issues - the gradual elevation of the city as it banks away from the ocean is part of what makes the photos from the city walls so beautiful. Our Insight Vacations guide - a cheery girl, who like me hadn't been infected by the GoT bug - told me, proudly, there are 5423 steps in Dubrovnik. "This keeps us in pretty good shape," she reported.
If you're visiting, avoid playing cards with the locals. During the Bosnian War of the early 1990s, kids couldn't attend school for a year and passed their time playing poker in the basements beneath the city.
A market inside the city of Dubrovnik. Photo / Insight Vacations
Away from the modesty-preserving staircase, those conformist tendencies of the ancient Dubrovnikers have helped to make the place pretty - and keep it that way. Centuries back it was written into local laws that buildings had to be made out of stone. A wooden house was deemed to be a fire hazard in the densely packed community and if you chose to build your pad out of timber, you would be banned from drinking alcohol. In their tight confines, they couldn't risk having a some drunk bozo knock over his embers and set the town ablaze.
Today, locals are obliged to clean the area outside their property each day, and those whitewashed walls and red-slated rooftops are all legislated. To think some Aucklanders say they have it tough having to mow their berms.
We found one dissenter. On our circumnavigation of the city walls, one of the travellers in our group of four spotted a rooftop restaurant. Where all the other rooftops were marked simply by terracotta slates, on this one we could see white linen. Counting the gridlike streets, we were able to figure out how to get there - it was six streets back from the main entrance and three streets inland from Stradun, the city's big boulevard.
The writer eating with friends at Above 5. Photo / Winston Aldworth
Who knows what devilish tricks this restaurant owner had been forced to play to get his rooftop perch cleared by the local council. They say: the better the view, the worse the food, right? And the name of this place didn't bode well: Above 5. "It sounds like a boyband from Essex," I muttered to one member of our group - from Essex - as we took the stairs to the ceiling.
Dear reader, this small, surprising little restaurant was - like the city it watches over - a slice of heaven.
So we sat, four of us in the Croatian sunshine, looking down on the Adriatic's gorgeous TV-star city. The food was unassuming and terrific, helped as it was by a couple of bottles of local dry rose wine. Some kind of perfect.
CHECKLIST
Details: Insight Vacations escorted journeys to Dalmatia include the 14-day Country Roads of Croatia and the 9-day Dalmatian Elegance.
