Dubrovnik. Things to do, map and hidden gems

The walls run 1,940 metres around the old town without a gap, up to 25 metres high, and in places six metres thick towards the land, where the danger came from. Most of what stands today was shaped in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the republic feared the Ottomans and paid for the fear in stone; the round Minčeta tower is the highest point and the signature of the skyline.

Walking the full circuit takes about ninety minutes with the sea on one side and a roofscape of new tiles on the other, the colour split a quiet record of the 1991 shelling and the rebuilding after it. Go at opening time or in the last two hours: the walls have no shade at all, and the ticket is also the reason the old town below stays car-free and intact.

The Minceta Fortress is the highest point of Dubrovnik's walls and their most recognisable outline: a round tower on the north-western corner, raised in 1319 as a square one and in the 15th century turned into a rounded fortress to the designs of Michelozzo and Juraj Dalmatinac, because the new cannonballs demanded sloped and thick walls instead of flat ones. The walls here are up to six metres thick, and from the crown the whole city is seen: red roofs in regular rows, the Stradun as a white line through the middle, Lokrum on the sea and the Srd behind your back. It carries the name of the Mencetic family from whose land it was built. The top is reached by walking the walls, the climb is the steepest part of the whole circuit, so save your strength; the reward is a viewpoint without equal on the Adriatic. Fans of the series will recognise it as the House of the Undying in Qarth. Go first thing in the morning, at eight, when the gates open: the sun is in the east, the city still in shade and the stairs empty.

The Game of Thrones filming locations turned Dubrovnik into King's Landing and brought the city a new generation of visitors: from 2011 to 2016 five seasons of the series were shot in the core and around it, and the places recognisable from the frames are toured today on one's own or with a guide. The best known are the steps of the Jesuit church of St Ignatius, on which the walk of shame scene was filmed, the Minceta fortress that played the House of the Undying in Qarth, the Lovrijenac fortress as the Red Keep, Gradac Park as the wedding site and the Pile cove as King's Landing's city harbour. Film props, among them a replica of the Iron Throne, are displayed in several private spaces and souvenir shops, where for a fee one may also sit. For fans there are two-hour themed tours linking all the locations with explanations about the shooting; for everyone else, these locations are Dubrovnik's main sights anyway, so the visit pays off whether or not you watched the series.

Fort Royal is the Napoleonic stronghold on Lokrum's highest point and the best viewpoint the island can give: a circular tower with casemates, which the French raised in 1806 to watch the approach to Dubrovnik from the sea, and which the Austrian and Yugoslav armies used later. A forest path leads to it from the landing, a climb of some twenty minutes through pines and cypresses, with markings easy to follow. From the fort's roof bursts a view that stops the breath: all of Dubrovnik with its walls in one direction, the open sea and the Elaphites in the other, and underfoot Lokrum itself with the botanical garden and the Dead Sea. The fort is open without charge but unmanaged, so watch where you step and keep children by the hand. Bring water, there is none on the path. Combine it with bathing in the coves and a walk through the garden, and a whole day on Lokrum composes itself without a single gap; the last boat to the city leaves toward evening.

The Strincjera fortress is part of Dubrovnik's outer defensive ring and one of the strongholds that guarded the landward approach to the city: a stone building on the slope of the Srd, raised in the Austrian era of the 19th century together with the Imperial fortress and a line of smaller positions that closed the ridge above the city. While the Imperial today carries a museum and the cable car, Strincjera stayed as the army left it: empty, overgrown and quiet, with casemates, staircases and embrasures through which the sea is seen. Precisely that neglect gives it a charm the tidied forts lack, but it also demands care: there is no lighting, no railings and no markings, so bring a torch, put on firm shoes and keep children close. A gravel path leads to the fortress from the Srd, the climb is gentle and takes half an hour. The reward is a view of the Rijeka dubrovacka valley and of the city from an angle no postcard sees, and a silence that in season is found nowhere closer to the sea.

The Cross on the Srd stands on the top of the hill above Dubrovnik and is seen from almost every point of the city: a concrete cross fifteen metres high, first raised in 1935 in memory of nineteen hundred years since Christ's death, brought down by shelling in 1991 and rebuilt in 2002 from white stone from Brac. For the people of Dubrovnik the cross is not only a religious sign but a reminder of the city's defence: while the defenders held the Imperial fortress a few steps away, the cross fell under the shells, and its rebuilding was one of the first postwar projects the city financed itself. The cross is reached by cable car or by the road onto the Srd, and it stands right by the upper station and the fortress with the Museum of the Homeland War. Around it is a paved plateau with benches and the best view of the old core from above. In the evening the cross is lit and is seen from the sea; ships entering the Dubrovnik harbour notice it before the walls.

Srđ is the bare ridge 412 metres straight above the old town. Napoleon's army built the Imperial fortress on top in 1812; in 1991 a few dozen defenders held that same fort through the siege while the city burned below, and half of it is now a museum of that war, raw and worth an hour.

The cable car glides up in under four minutes, or you walk the zigzag Way of the Cross path in about an hour. Go up for the hour before sunset: the whole walled city, Lokrum and the Elaphiti islands lie below, and the walk down as the lights come on beats the ride.

Lokrum is an island ten minutes by boat from the old port and a whole world of peace: a protected reserve with century-old pines, cypresses and a botanical garden planted in 1859 by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, who turned the 11th-century Benedictine monastery into a summer residence. From his garden descend the peacocks that today walk the paths as the island's hosts and demand part of your lunch. On the island are also the Dead Sea, a small salt lakelet connected to the sea, warm and shallow, ideal for children, and the Napoleonic Fort Royal at the top with a view of all Dubrovnik. Bathing is off the rocks, with ladders and slabs, and one stretch of shore is traditionally naturist. Legend says the banished Benedictines cursed the island, so no one may spend the night on it; the boats indeed run only until evening. Bring water and lunch, catering is modest. For a day of escape from the city's crush there is no better choice.

Gradac Park is a green terrace above the sea west of the walls and the best answer to where to flee when the core is overfull: a garden with pines, cypresses and agaves on the cliff above the Dance cove, laid out at the start of the 20th century, with benches looking onto the open sea and the Elaphites. Here the shade is thick and the crowd rare, because most visitors do not cross the bridge by the Pile Gate. The park also has a sad history: on this spot, tradition says, the people of Dubrovnik buried the victims of the great earthquake of 1667, and in recent times the park was hit by shelling in 1991. In summer performances of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival are held in it, among them Hamlet in the open, and the acoustics of rock and pines hold the sound exceptionally. From the core the park is a ten-minute walk across the Brsalje, and the path leads on to the Dance beach and the Lovrijenac complex. For a sunset this is the best free address in the city: the sun falls straight into the sea and the walls stay behind your back.

The Rupe Ethnographic Museum is set in a building that is itself the most interesting exhibit: a state granary of the 16th century, in whose ground floor fifteen huge pits were carved into the living rock, the holes from which the building took its name, holding over twelve hundred tonnes of grain. The republic kept stores because the city imported its food, and in a siege or a barren year grain meant survival; the pits were lined and held a constant temperature, so the grain kept for years. Today one walks along the edges of the pits over a glass floor, which is the best part of the visit. On the upper floors is the ethnographic collection: folk costumes of Konavle and the Dubrovnik littoral, textiles, jewellery, tools, objects from village houses and the whole story of how the hinterland lived while the city traded. The museum is cool, quiet and rarely full, and it stands on a height above Gunduliceva poljana, ten minutes' climb from the Stradun.

Lovrijenac stands on a 37-metre rock outside the walls, and its proportions tell the republic's whole political philosophy: the walls facing the sea and a possible enemy are up to twelve metres thick, the wall facing the city is sixty centimetres. If a commander ever turned against Dubrovnik, one cannon shot from the town would open his fortress like an egg. Above the gate the republic carved its motto: liberty is not sold for all the gold in the world.

Since 1952 the upper terrace has doubled as a stage, and Hamlet played here made the fort famous far beyond Croatia. The climb is steep, the ticket is shared with the city walls, and the view back onto the walled town is the one the drone shots imitate.

War Photo Limited is one of the most serious galleries of war photography in the world and probably the most unexpected content in Dubrovnik's core: a two-storey space in Antuninska street, opened in 2003 by the New Zealand photojournalist Wade Goddard with the explicit intention that war photography be not an ornament but a document. The permanent display upstairs is devoted to the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the nineties, with photographs from Vukovar, Sarajevo and the siege of Dubrovnik itself, while the ground floor rotates exhibitions of authors working in current conflicts, from Syria to Ukraine. The display is not easy and not for small children, but it is respectful toward its subject and without sensationalism; captions are in Croatian and English, and the visit takes an hour. The gallery works from spring to autumn, the ticket is moderate. For a visitor who yesterday walked the walls and saw the damage maps of 1991, this is the place that gives that map faces. Few galleries in Croatia leave a stronger impression.

The market on Gunduliceva poljana is the only part of the old core that works for the city and not for visitors: every morning except Sunday, from six to noon, stalls are set up around the monument to the poet Ivan Gundulic and what has arrived from Konavle and the Elaphites is sold, tomatoes, figs, mandarins, lavender, honey, olive oil, dried fruit and homemade brandy. Prices are lower than in the shops of the core, and if you buy from the same people a second time, you will also get advice on what is best that day. The square is also the loveliest in the city, with baroque facades, the Jesuit Stairs on one side and cafés that fill as soon as the market disperses. Gundulic, whose monument stands in the middle, wrote Osman, an epic still taught in schools; reliefs on the pedestal show scenes from the work. Come at eight in the morning with a cloth bag: a breakfast of fresh figs and bread from the market, eaten on the steps, is the best meal Dubrovnik offers under ten euros.