Even if you are not a museum-goer, let us show you why the House of Marin Držić is certainly one of the must-visit museums in Dubrovnik. 

Who was Marin? 

Let’s start with the story of who was Držić and his importance to Dubrovnik and the world.
Držić was a world-famous 16th-century playwright, poet, and one of the key authors of the European Renaissance comedy. His works abound in clashes of the traditional and the modern, fiction and reality, the comic and the tragic.

ŠIROKA STREET, DUBROVNIK

He died when Shakespeare was three years old. Molière was born a whole century after him. A century and a half passed from his death until the appearance of Carlo Goldoni. Držić was a man of great literary talent. His works are an important legacy to the whole European and world comedy scene. However, they were also somewhat controversial at the time as he portrayed current events and political situations through comedy and thus came into conflict with the authorities.

In Držić’s honor and memory, his birth house located in the very center of the Old City, in Široka Street adjacent to the Domino Church, was turned into a museum dedicated to his life and works.

House of Marin Držić, founded in 1989, is not just an ordinary museum through which you will pass and never remember it again. You will find its concept and interior design very thoughtfully designed. Years from Držić’s biography (1508 – 1567) are marked at the staircase, there is a display of his family and genealogical tree and his conspiratorial letters, reconstructions of object collections made based on Držić’s promissory note, references to the author’s theater characters through costumes,… all interpreted by different techniques. There are also portraits of contemporary painters, small-format sculptures, and objects of applied arts.

The management of the House is truly dedicated to maintaining and improving the primary role of the museum, which is to engage and educate the local community, as well as tourist visitors. They aim to become a science and research center for studying Držić’s life and works, so they even created the audio guide about Držić for foreign visitors. Also, through various workshops for children, House of Marin Držić encourages partnerships between schools and cultural institutions, thus contributing to the development of the local community.

Visit this delightful museum, get to know more about Držić and his work, go back in time to the Renaissance, and feel the atmosphere in Dubrovnik in that era.

The origin of our present holiday lies in the fight for an eight-hour working day. 

The entire 19th century is marked by heartless exploited workers. Low wages and hours of daily work, from 12 to 18 hours for adult parents and children, exhausted people who, in all countries, developed a major strike capitalism, demanded decent working and living conditions. The strike movements experienced the largest momentum in the United States.

THE PROTEST

On May 1, 1886, about 40,000 workers protested in Chicago, emphasizing the requirements symbolized in 3 figures: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of cultural education.

At the First Congress of the Second International in 1889. to commemorate the bloodshed in Chicago, it’s decided that workers’ protests would take place on May 1 of each year. As early as 1890, this date became the tradition of May Day ie. Praznik rada in Croatia as workers’ holiday. Croatian workers highlighted the three-figure demands as the symbol of the support.

MAY DAY ie. PRAZNIK RADA IN CROATIA

In a free and independent Croatia under the Law on Holidays, Remembrances and Non-Working Days in the Republic of Croatia, voted in Parliament in April 1996, the official title of this holiday was Blagdan rada. That remained until November 2, 2001, when the amendments to the said law became the Praznik rada.

WHY PEOPLE COOK BEANS ON LABOUR DAY? 

There’s no official rule, and the simplest explanation is that beans have always been a worker’s meal. The energy value in 100g of beans is 333 calories, 60% of which are carbohydrates. Therefore, after a fair serving of beans, the workers and the peasants were ready for long hard work.

Dear readers, once again happy International May Day ie. Praznik rada in Croatia while enjoying our bean soup at home. #staysafe

Visit Forest Home Cemetery Overview if you would like to know more about The Haymarket Monument and Time Capsule.

Photo credit: Forest Home Cemetery and Daily Radical History

There was a man born in a Renaissance Dubrovnik who challenged people of his time, broke some new boundaries and gave us the best literary work we have to this very day. His name was    MARIN DRŽIĆ

Who was Marin? 

We don’t know for a fact the year of his birth, but it probably it must have been 1508. His family had a noble title up until 14th century, but they lost it because one of his ancestors fled the city in time of the plague which was not a very noble act, one must say.

YEARS IN SIENA

It was a family tradition that someone becomes a monk or a priest (it was very common in those times, and girls who didn’t marry were sent to a convent which is also an interesting fact) and one of the most important Marin’s ancestors, Džore Držić, also belonged to the church. 

Džore Držić was a Croatian poet and playwright, one of the fathers of Croatian literature. He was Marin’s uncle, his father’s brother, and it must be that young Marin has read and studied his uncle’s verse.

Džore died before Marin was born, in 1501. and left the great legacy behind. Marin was also connected to the Church in many ways. In 1538. he played church organ in Dubrovnik Cathedral and in the same year he got the scholarship to go to college in Siena, Italy. As we know, he didn’t finish his studies, but it was there in Siena where he found an inspiration and love for the theatre. Later on, we will see how his life took an unexpected turn and why he was a man of the future even though he most certainly didn’t know that.

Love for the theatre

It was around the year 1548. that his plays started to appear. It was a common thing for them to perform at wedding parties of important people of the time, or in front of the Rector’s Palace in the public for people to enjoy. For the crowd was hungry for laughs and magic so much that there is a story that one time, while people were trying to see or hear one of Marin’s plays that was performed at a wedding party, it was so many people there that the brick fell of the wall and hit one man in the head.

Controversy & conspirational letters

Beside all that, we know Držić was also connected with some controversial doings. He dared to speak of things no writer before him dared to speak of. He has challenged the minds of his generation, brought critique and deepened the way people were seeing art and thinking about it. We can say that he was intelligent enough to use his words to create characters and situations we can relate to without any hesitation, even today.

That is exactly what we think when we say that his plays are still fresh and consumable, and there is no doubt that they will be so in the distant future too. In one period of his life, in 1566., Držić was involved in politics and was very unsatisfied with how things were going in the Republic, so he decided to write to Cosimo de’ Medici and seek for help.

There are five conspiratorial letters that we know of and they are well kept in the archives in Florence. Everything after that episode in his life becomes pretty blurry. We know that Marin went to Venice and died there the very next year, in 1567. We still don’t know what the cause of his death was.

Why is Držić so important and where can we find him?

So what is interesting in this man, his life and his writings today? Because I’m pretty sure that if you’d have known him, you would most certainly love him. He was a man beyond his time, and his literary works are very fresh and interesting even today. He is the greatest Croatian playwright of all time, one of the most eminent Croatian writers in history, as well as one of the key authors of the European Renaissance comedy.

In fact, one of his most popular plays “Dundo Maroje” (“Uncle Maroye”) you can find and read it in English. Nowadays, you can find Marin Držić at the House of Marin Držić, institution in culture of the City of Dubrovnik, founded in 1989. It’s situated in Široka street 7. In our next blog follow the concept of the House of Marin Držić and find the numerous reasons why you should visit Držić House while your stay in Dubrovnik.

And remember, when you visit the country or a city, you don’t visit the buildings or the fortresses only, you also visit people and the spirit of everything that makes them who they are. Their poetry, their art and everything their culture was made of. With this in mind, we hope you will remember our Marin and his great spirit while walking the streets of Dubrovnik.

Photo credit: House of Marin Držić

Those who come from plague-infected areas shall not enter Dubrovnik

The first solid quarantine of Dubrovnik were the islands of Mrkan, Supetar and Bobara in front of Cavtat. These are small, mostly naked, unprotected islets, in which the sheltered or isolated (exiled) have nowhere to hide from rain, wind, cold or summer heat. 

There was no water, and food was brought to them by boat. For this reason, very costly and poor barracks were built occasionally and temporarily for them. They could be assembled quickly and could be easily destroyed or burned if needed (worn out or end of an epidemic). Until the 1930s, these islands were the most common contours of the Dubrovnik Republic. When there was no longer any place for them as a quarantine to isolate the sick and suspected of having a contagious disease, they used Sveti Andrija (Croatian for “Saint Andrew”) and Mljet island. In 1466, the Senate decided to build the lazaretto at Danče and used it as a plague hospital (today there are only remains of it).

For the Dubrovnik Republic to function successfully in a segment of preventing the plague spread and be able to implement procedures and measures, health officials were appointed in 1420 to serve as “officiales cazamortuorum,” popularly called Cazamorti (catchers of death), as the supreme health authority in the Republic. Special persons were designated to bury the dead, popularly called kopci (gravediggers). There is an interesting practical decision by the Senate, dated in 1462, to employ 20 women who survived the plague in the Lazaretto, because they were not in danger of contracting the infection – which indicated an early comprehension of acquired immunity. It was also decided, in 1486, that ships had to have health certificates, which contained health information on situations in ports that the ships sailed from for port health authorities to be able to determine the level of preventive measures for persons and cargo upon their arrival.

At the very beginning self-isolation in quarantine was 30 days but prolonged to 40 days (quaranta) due to unknown incubation period. Italy followed this sample 46 years later and established lazarettos in 1423 on Santa Maria di Nazareth (also called „Nazaretum“ or „Lazaretum“, today „Lazzaretto Vecchio“), an island in the Venetian Lagoon.

The Lazarettos we know today situated at Ploče are build in 1590 with construction completed in 1642. It contained 10 multistory buildings (5 for goods, 5 for people) connected by 5 interior courtyards. Today, the Lazarettos are used for recreation, trade, and entertainment.

Text by Hello Dubrovnik