DUBROVNIK’S DESTRUCTION & RECONSTRUCTION
Caught in the cross hairs of the civil war that ravaged former Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik was pummeled with some 2000 shells in 1991 and 1992. When the smoke finally cleared in June 1992, the extent of the damage was severe.
Shell’s struck 68% of the 824 buildings in the old town, leaving holes in two out of three tiled roofs. Building facades and the paving stones of streets and squares suffered 314 direct hits and there were 111 direct hits on the great wall. Nine historic palaces were completely gutted by the fire while the Sponza Palace, Rector’s Palace, St. Blaise’s Church, Franciscan monastery and the carved fountains – Amerling and Onofrio, sustained serious damage. The restoration of the old town alone was to reach into the billions.
In order to handle the complex process of restoring the ancient city, an Expert Advisory Commission for the Rehabilitation was formed. The committee developed a master plan for the restoration work which would guarantee that all the repairs and reconstruction would be done with traditional techniques, using traditional materials whenever feasible.
One of the first and most urgent problems confronted by the committee’s experts was repairing the city’s tiled roofs in order to prevent water damage from rainfall. The rosy terracotta tiles that had topped all of Dubrovnik’s buildings were originally produced in a tile factory in Kupari, south of Dubrovnik, that had long since closed.
The traditional method was to knead the clay and then shape it to the curve on a man’s thigh before baking it. Such a procedure was far too lengthy under the circumstances, and the committee launched a desperate search for an existing supply of tiles to plug up the most critical holes. Replacements of the same color proved impossible to find.
The closest match came from the town of Agen in South-West France, which provided the first 200,000 tiles, followed by another 400,000 from a factory in Slovenia. The tiles now come from Bedekov?ina in the Krapina River valley. Though the red and ochre colors of the new tiles blends badly with the more subdued shade of the old Kupari tiles, the older tiles are gradually being replaced building by building.
The restorers faced a similar problem in finding a source of the fine white limestone used to build the city. The original stone came from nearby Vrink, off the island of Kor?ula, but the quarries have since fallen into disuse and are only capable of producing a small amounts of stone.
The island of Bra? has a long tradition of stonemasonry and a ready supply of high-quality stone; even with this stone, though, the restorers worried that obvious differences in color and texture would only magnify over time. The solution was to use the Bra? stone in places that had already used the stone or where it would not be readily visible, such as in drainage gutters.
With the war damage largely repaired, the focus of the committee is turning towards protecting Dubrovnik’s glorious architectural heritage from the ravages of time, weather and earthquakes. The process of replacing the old roof tiles is continuing. St. Blaise’s Church is undergoing structural reinforcement, while other buildings are being monitored for their structural integrity. Located in a zone that is seismic both geologically and politically, Dubrovnik’s citizens have become more determined than ever to protect their fragile, wondrous town.