r
embroideries or metal-work, sparkling in the sun, or cases containing
jewellery, brightly coloured leather-work, &c. Above the roof-cornices
quaint dormers and strangely fashioned chimneys rise, producing a most
picturesque sky-line.

[Illustration: TORRE MENZE AND FORT S. LORENZO, RAGUSA

_To face page 337_]

The walls are perfect in their whole circuit, and give one a very clear
idea of the complicated arrangements for the defence of a mediaeval town,
by the many gateways and tortuous roads by which the town is entered,
while the external appearance remains quite mediaeval.

These fortifications date from 1380, when the last Venetian Count had
gone, but there are later additions. At this time the Castel S. Lorenzo
was built, displacing an oratory built on the site of a nunnery
established before the eleventh century. Forte Molo, by the harbour
(formerly Fort S. Giovanni, and now much altered) and the tower of S.
Luca still remain of the earlier fortifications. As the town spread it
was fortified by the addition of the Torre Menze (built in 1464 by
Michelozzo and George of Sebenico, but altered in 1538), the Torre
Leverone (built in 1539 to defend the harbour and the road to Breno),
and Fort S. Margherita (1571). The French built Fort Imperiale on Monte
Sergio and the battery on Lacroma. The cliff-like masses of stone are
stern and forbidding, and one thinks the citizens must have been glad to
escape from them on to the wooded slopes of Monte Sergio (bare and stony
now), though their apparent impregnability must have been comforting in
those days; when the strong hand often over-ruled right and justice.

The origin of the city is given thus. Fugitives from Epidaurus (Ragusa
Vecchia) in 639 took refuge on a rocky hill sheltered by an oak wood
(_dubrava_ in Slav, from which the Slav name Dubrovnik may be derived),
and Salonitans joined them. In 690 or 870 they began to enclose the
place with walls, with the help of the Servian ruler, Paulimir. These
walls only enclosed the southern part, and the Stradone served as ditch
and harbour. It is claimed that the Republic was founded in 663. Three
extensions of the walls are recorded before the twelfth century. There
was a Slavonic colony on Monte Sergio, on the other side of the ditch,
and the name of their patron saint, Sergius, has survived in that name.
The patron saint of the Latin colony on the island was Bacchus, and when
the two colonies amalgamated, as neither wo