Cavtat is a town and the centre of the Konavle municipality, located 15 km away from the Old Town.
The origins of the city go back to the 6th century BC when the Greeks founded the city under the name of Epidaurus (later Epidaurum in the Roman times). After an attack led by Avars and Slavs in the 7th century, refugees from Epidaurum came to the island Laus (Ragus) that eventually established the city of Dubrovnik.
Cavtat was known as a tranquil getaway of wealthy citizens from Dubrovnik in the past offering long pathways with lush vegetation as well as plenty of pebbly beaches, such as famous Zal beach in the eastern part of the town.
There is a town cemetery containing a white mausoleum that belongs to the Racic family that was decorated by one of the greatest Croatian sculptors, Ivan Meštrović. Captain and ship owner Ivo Račić accumulated wealth for his family, but unfortunately his children and his wife died of the Spanish flu. It was his wife who wished all of them buried together in this grandiose mausoleum.
Cavtat is also a hometown of another great Croatian artist Vlaho Bukovac who gained his fame in Paris and the capital of Croatia, Zagreb. Another interesting monument is a former Rector’s Palace that is converted into a museum dedicated to local hero and 19th-century scholar Baltazar Bogišić, while next to it there is a Baroque St. Nicholas Church with an adjacent museum.
