Dubrovnik, Croatia
The Beautiful Castle in Dubrovnik is dubbed “Kings Landing” and is a lodging for a King, located on the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea.
Lovrijenac has a triangular shape with three terraces. The thickness of the walls facing the outside reach 12 m whereas the section of the walls facing the inside, the actual city, are only 60 cm thick. Two drawbridges lead to the fort and above the gate there is an inscription Non Bene Pro Toto Libertas Venditur Auro (Freedom is not to be sold for all the treasures in the world)
Dubrovnik (pronounced [dǔbroːʋnik]) is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It has been referred to “The St.-Tropez of the Balkans”
It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641. In 1979, the city of Dubrovnik joined the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
The prosperity of the city of Dubrovnik has always been based on maritime trade. In the Middle Ages, as the Republic of Ragusa, also known as a Maritime Republic (together with Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, Venice and other Italian cities), it became the only eastern Adriatic city-state to rival Venice. Supported by its wealth and skilled diplomacy, the city achieved a high level of development, particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries. Although demilitarized in the 1970s with the intent of forever protecting it from war devastation, in 1991, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was besieged by Serb-Montenegrin forces for 7 months and received significant damage from being shelled.
Dubrovnik’s motto, Libertas (“liberty”), which is plastered across the sides of buses and the city’s tourist literature, speaks volumes about the city’s self-image and the idealized way in which it is perceived by others. For several centuries the city-state of Dubrovnik – or Ragusa as it was then known – managed to hang on to a modicum of independence while the rest of this coast fell under the sway of foreign powers. The Venetian Lion of St Mark is conspicuously absent, while statues of St Blaise (Sveti Vlaho), the symbol of Dubrovnik’s independence, fill every conceivable crack and niche in the city.
An essentially medieval city reshaped by Baroque town planners after a disastrous earthquake of 1667, Dubrovnik’s historic core seems to have been suspended in time ever since. Set-piece churches and public buildings blend seamlessly with the green-shuttered stone houses, to form a perfect ensemble relatively untouched by the twenty-first century. Outside the city walls, modern Dubrovnik is comparatively bereft of sights but exudes a Mediterranean elegance, gardens are an explosion of colourful bougainvillea and oleanders, trees are weighted down with figs, lemons, oranges and peaches.
Few visitors will notice any remaining signs of the 1991–92 Siege of Dubrovnik, during which over two thousand enemy shells fell on the old city. Reconstruction has been undertaken with astonishing speed, and the old town is pretty much back to its normal self. The fact that conflict took place here at all only reveals itself through subtle details: the vivacious orange-red hues of brand-new roof tiles, or the contrasting shades of grey where damaged facades have been patched up with freshly quarried stone.
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Santorini, Greece pronounced [sadoˈrini]), classically Thera, and officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα [ˈθira]), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from Greece’s mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the same name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km2 (28 sq mi) and a 2001 census population of 13,670. The municipality of Santorini comprises the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia and the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi, and Christiana. The total land area is 90.623 km2 (34.990 sq mi). Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit.
Santorini is essentially what remains after an enormous volcanic explosion that destroyed the earliest settlements, on a formerly single island, and created the current geological caldera. A giant central, rectangular lagoon, which measures about 12 by 7 km (7.5 by 4.3 mi), is surrounded by 300 m (980 ft) high, steep cliffs on three sides. The main island slopes downward to the Aegean Sea. On the fourth side, the lagoon is separated from the sea by another much smaller island called Therasia; the lagoon is connected to the sea in two places, in the northwest and southwest. The caldera being 400m deep makes it possible for all but the largest ships to anchor anywhere in the protected bay; there is, however, a newly built marina in Vlychada on the southwestern coast. The principal port is called Athinias. The capital, Fira, clings to the top of the cliff looking down on the lagoon. The volcanic rocks present from the prior eruptions feature olivine and have a notably small presence of hornblende.
It is the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, though what remains today is chiefly a water-filled caldera. The volcanic arc is approximately 500 km (310 mi) long and 20 to 40 km (12 to 25 mi) wide. The region first became volcanically active around 3–4 million years ago, though volcanism on Thera began around 2 million years ago with the extrusion of dacitic lavas from vents around the Akrotiri.
The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred some 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of feet deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km (68 mi) to the south, through a gigantic tsunami. This theory is not, however, supported by chronology, in that the collapse of the Minoan civilization did not occur at the date of the tsunami, but some 90 years later.Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3m6croeo21r6eb8po1_1280.jpg)
