Franciscan Monastery, Dubrovnik

Franciscan Monastery, Dubrovnik tickets: which one to buy

The Franciscan monastery stands immediately inside the Pile gate at the western end of the Stradun, the main street of Dubrovnik, so it is the first building every visitor passes. The church is free to enter; the cloister and the museum, which includes the old pharmacy, are covered by a small ticket sold in the passage between the church and the cloister. Buy it. The monastery sits right beside the start of the city walls walk, so combining the two in an early morning is the natural plan.

Walking tours of the old town begin at the Pile gate and usually stop here briefly. The pharmacy still operates as a working chemist and sells its own creams made to old recipes, which visitors buy as souvenirs. The city card may cover the museum; check the current list. Because this is where the crowds enter the old town, timing matters more than anything else. A carved stone head on the wall outside is a local challenge: balancing on it facing the wall is said to bring luck.

Visiting Franciscan Monastery, Dubrovnik: what to see

The Franciscans moved inside the walls in the fourteenth century, and their church and monastery were built from about 1317, though the church was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1667 and rebuilt in baroque form. Only the south portal survives from the earlier church, with a carved Pieta above the door. The cloister is the great survival: a late Romanesque arcade of paired columns, built around 1360 by the mason Mihoje Brajkov, each capital carved with a different figure, animal, human head or plant, around a garden with a fountain.

The pharmacy, founded in 1317, is among the oldest still operating in Europe, and part of its historic furnishings, jars, mortars and manuscript recipe books, are shown in the museum along with paintings and goldsmiths' work. Marks from shells fired during the siege of 1991 and 1992 have been left visible on the walls of the cloister. The monastery library holds thousands of manuscripts and early printed books, a few of them displayed in cases.

Franciscan Monastery, Dubrovnik opening hours and the best time to go

The Pile gate is the busiest point in Dubrovnik from about nine in the morning, when the cruise passengers and coach tours arrive, until late afternoon. Arrive at opening, visit the cloister first, then climb the walls from the entrance next door before the heat and the queues build. The monastery closes earlier in winter. Dubrovnik is quieter and far more pleasant from October to May, though some ferries and services reduce.

The summer festival in July and August uses the old town for theatre and music. The feast of Saint Blaise on the third of February is the city's great day. Allow thirty to forty minutes for the cloister and museum, and look closely at the capitals, which are easy to walk past. The pharmacy counter keeps shop hours and closes before the museum on some days.