Franciscan Monastery and Old Pharmacy

The Franciscan Monastery is the first great building on your left as you walk down Stradun from the Pile Gate, and it hides two of the Old Town's quiet treasures behind a plain wall. The friars moved here from outside the walls in the early fourteenth century, when war threatened the Republic, and construction of the monastery began in 1317. The 1667 earthquake destroyed much of the complex, but the cloister survived, and it is the reason to come: a late-Romanesque square of slender double columns, each pair topped with a different carved capital of animals, faces and plants, built by Mihoje Brajkov of Bar and counted among the finest cloisters of its age in Dalmatia. Orange and palm trees shade the garden in the middle, and the painted lunettes along the walls show scenes from the life of St Francis. Off the cloister is the old pharmacy, which the friars founded in the same period and which is often cited as the third-oldest functioning pharmacy in the world. The historic room is now a small museum of apothecary jars, mortars, scales and handwritten prescription books; around the corner, a working pharmacy still sells creams and remedies made to monastery recipes, popular as souvenirs. The museum also displays reliquaries, paintings and gold work from the monastery treasury, and the library holds medieval manuscripts and early printed books, though the library itself is not generally open to casual visitors. On the way in, look at the southern portal facing Stradun, the only surviving fragment of the original church, carved with a Pietà in 1498. Entry to the cloister and museum is by a modest ticket, and the visit takes under an hour.

The monastery works best as a pause rather than a destination. Step in early, before the Pile Gate crowds build, or at midday when Stradun is at its hottest; the cloister is cool, shaded and almost silent, and even the busiest days feel slower inside. Walk the full arcade slowly and look at the capitals one by one, then sit for a few minutes on the edge of the garden. The museum rooms are small, so allow half an hour at most for the jars, the reliquaries and the paintings, and check the wall where a shell fragment from the 1991 to 1992 siege is preserved as a reminder that the monastery was hit during the bombardment.

The pharmacy is the story most visitors come for. The friars have been preparing medicines here for centuries, and their recipes for rose creams and herbal remedies are still made and sold today, so the shop is a good place to buy a gift that actually comes from the place. Inside the church, which was rebuilt in Baroque style after the earthquake, you can see the tomb of Ivan Gundulić, the great poet of the Republic, and on the street outside, look for the small stone protruding from the wall near the entrance, where locals and visitors try to balance with their faces to the wall; it is a harmless tradition for luck that children enjoy.

Practicalities: the monastery is a working religious house, so dress modestly and keep voices low in the church. The cloister ticket is inexpensive and sold at the entrance; some versions of the Dubrovnik Pass have included the monastery museum, but check the current list before relying on it. Pair the visit with the Large Onofrio Fountain outside and a walk down Stradun, or with the city walls, whose Pile Gate entrance is a few steps away. Combined with the Dominican Monastery at the opposite end of the Old Town, it makes a perfect morning of cloisters.