September te 20th, 2019 – While the renovation and the construction works were performed near Orlando’s column right at the beginning (or the end, depending on the perspective) of Stradun, the main road in Dubrovnik Old Town, an unexpected discovery has been made.
Dubrovniknet writes about the brick fields found and registered, and the bricks were laid down on the pavement in the shape of a fishbone. Although the exact period during which these bricks were set on Stradun has not been determined, it can be safely assumed that it was done after the city’s proclamation from 1360, but before the decision was made by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th century.
That is the decision that lead to Stradun being fully paved in stone, which is what we know it to look like now. Before the bricks, it is known that the streets in Dubrovnik were paved with wood, and now it has been found that the brick structure in the pavement has been trimmed with wooden elements.
It is also not known where the bricks used to pave the roads in Dubrovnik came from. The Facebook page Heritage_zupadubrovacka shared the photos of the newly-found pavement on Stradun and explained that Dubrovnik produced the bricks in Kupari, and sometimes it was exported to what is currently Italy (and, sometimes when there were shortages, it was imported from there too). The wood for the stoves for the brick production mostly came from Mljet. Is it possible that the bricks in Stradun were made in Kupari? Time and detailed analyses will tell…
The pavement surface in front of the Church of St. Blaise started earlier this September and should be finished within 90 days – if spectacular archaeological finds don’t delay it. The goal of the renovation is to maintain the healthy stones and to remove the dirt. The works are supposed to cost around 1 million kuna, and all is to be done under the watchful eye of the conservators of the heritage of Dubrovnik.
