Dubrovnik Archives

Dubrovnik Archive or National Archive in Dubrovnik (Croatian: Dubrovački arhiv, Državni arhiv u
Dubrovniku) is the national archive in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It holds materials created by the civil
service in the Republic of Ragusa, i.e. notary and secretarial services from the 13th century, and after
the fall of the Republic in 1808 documents created by the offices and institutions in the city of
Dubrovnik during the French, Habsburg, Yugoslav and Croatian reign.

The archive is important because the Republic of Ragusa had trade and political ties with all of the
countries on the Mediterranean Sea and the interior of the southeastern part of the European
continent; moreover, the documents and written records from that period represent very valuable
historical material for the study of Croatian and Ragusan history, as well as the history of neighboring
countries.

Dubrovnik archive was created as a result of notary and secretarial services in the 13th century, with
archived materials located in various locales, such as the offices of the civil services, magistrates and
the offices outside the city walls. Since the mid-fifteenth century materials were stored in the ornate
cabinets in Rector's Palace, which still serve the same purpose. Another part of the archived
materials consisted of the most important privileges and contracts concluded between the Republic
and the neighboring rulers, religious dignitaries and cities with which Dubrovnik held political and
trade relations, and was stored in the treasury of the Cathedral of St. Mary. In addition to these two
archive locations, the Republic of Ragusa had a few more, but they have all been destroyed, such as
the archive in the Archbishop's Palace which was destroyed during a fire in 1667.[1]

The bulk of the archived documents result from the operation of the offices of the city government,
whose organization was completed during the 15th century. The existing state archives eventually
formed into a separate institution, by various executive decisions of the highest bodies of the
Republic of Ragusa. Te term archive was first attested in 1599, and by 1760 archived documents from
all locations was assembled in the Rector's Palace. Attestation of the term state archivist (publico
archivista) dates since 1783. At that year the structure of the archive was recorded as divided into 14
series (861 volumes), while the unbound documents were arranged in 10 tables, by their initial
letters from A through K. During the nineteenth and the twentieth century most of the archived
material was taken away. In 1920 the Archive began operating as an independent institution, and in
1952 it relocated to the Sponza palace, where it is located to this day. During the Homeland War the
archive building was heavily damaged in two attacks in 1991.

Today's collection comprises 300 thematic units (fondovi) and collections, with more than 2.7 million
pages of written documents, deeds and contracts. The oldest documents are the Bull of Pope
Benedict VIII from 1022, and documents on founding the Benedictine Monastery on the island of
Lokrum in 1023 – both however preserved in much later copies. Major thematic units are those
dating from the era of the Republic and French administration. The archive also contains records of
offices and institutions who operated during the nineteenth and twentieth century within the city
and its administrative area. In addition, the archive contains books from Dubrovnik and the island of
Korčula up until 1860, the Collection of geographical maps as well as private family archives. Today,
the Archive stores material from the Dubrovnik-Neretva County, functioning as an external archive
service.

From the Dubrovnik State Archive web-site: "According to the quantity of material that is stored in it,
according to its age and above all values, the National Archives in Dubrovnik is one of the richest in
the region, alongside those in the Vatican, Vienna, Venice or Istanbul."
Since its early days, Dubrovnik, a medieval city - a commune, and then a republic - that is an
independent state - payed great attention to the written word and the manner of protecting
documents. Some are very valuable; especially valuable certificates are kept in the most holy place -
in the city cathedral, among the relics of saints. It is to this love and care of old Dubrovnik towards a
written document, that we thank today the fact archive repositories stretch nearly a thousand years -
since the beginning of the 11th century until the present.

But certainly, the most valuable are those that belong to archival collections of the Dubrovnik
Republic. The oldest original document kept here dates from the year 1022. This is a bull of Pope
Benedict VIII addressed to the then Archbishop of Dubrovnik Vital.

As a community whose overall development was based not on war but rather on trade, Dubrovnik
concluded several agreements on friendship and free trade with similar communes from the Adriatic
wider cultural sphere, in the 12th and 13th centuries. With them preserved are many charters of
peace and trade with rulers and nobles from nearby and far Balkan hinterland with which Dubrovnik
was often in conflict because of their threat to the small territory of Dubrovnik and free trade.

The growing momentum of trade had, indirectly, inspired the founding of the Dubrovnik archives.
That year, 1278, Dubrovnik authorities, and due to the increasing number of commercial and other
activities, which had to be concluded in written form, decided to establish a municipal notary office.
So this year for the first notary public was appointed, Italian Tomasino de Saver. Tomasino and his
successors diligently typed various shopping and purchase agreements of the parties in the notary
books, certificates of borrowing money, marriage contracts, wills of Dubrovnik aristocrats and
commoners - in short everything that characterized the daily life of the city. These notary book today
allow us to look into every detail, through the centuries, monitor and study Dubrovnik living
microcosmos, to find out how they are assembled certain jobs, what was traded, who is married with
whom, who was rich and who is poor and much, much more.

Statute of Dubrovnik and Customs statute, from the late 13th century, and various other legal books,
decisions Dubrovnik Council, the supreme authority, which in continuity can be traced from 1301
until the French occupation and the fall of the Dubrovnik Republic in 1808, provide a wealth of data
on state-legal structure of Dubrovnik and its relation to foreign rulers and states. In 1358 ceased the
supreme authority of Venice over Dubrovnik. From then until 1526, Dubrovnik in its supreme
sovereign recognizes the Croatian-Hungarian king, and over the centuries has paid tribute to the
mighty Ottoman sultans. Still, at least from the early 15th century, Dubrovnik rightfully is called a
republic - an independent, sovereign and internationally recognized state. Around the
Mediterranean and Europe Dubrovnik Republic, over many centuries had its consulates and other
diplomatic missions in the courts of many foreign rulers. Numerous traces of these contacts -
operating messengers, letters consuls, and various charters of Europe of that time and of world
statesmen, kings and emperors, from Spain, Vatican City, Austria, Turkey, over the rulers of Germany,
France, England, to Russia and the United States , are carefully preserved in the archives of
Dubrovnik.

The largest number of archive of books and documents, particularly from the early period, was
written in Latin, which was then the official diplomatic language, but there are lots of documents in
Italian and Croatian, and Turkish (over 15,000 Turkish laws) and, in to a lesser extent, in Spanish,
Arabic, Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Armenian language.
The overall structure of the National Archives in Dubrovnik, divided into more than 400 funds and
collections, occupies an area of over eight per linear kilometers, and the most precious funds, of the
Dubrovnik Republic, contains over 7,000 bound books and more than 100,000 independent
documents, including the manuscripts and printed books of very famous scientists and writers
(Gundulić, Palmotić, Getaldić, Bošković - to name just a few), but also a rich collection of old maps,
photographs, postcards, newspapers, magazines and various plans and sketches.

Building(s)

The Sponza Palace (Croatian: Palača Sponza), also called Divona (from dogana, customs), is a 16th-
century palace in Dubrovnik, Croatia, built in a mixed Gothic and Renaissance style. It was built
between 1516 and 1522, and has served a variety of public functions, including as customs office,
treasury, bank, mint and school. The palace became the cultural center of the Republic of Ragusa
with the establishment of the Academia dei Concordi, a literary academy, in the 16th century. The
palace's atrium served as a trading center and business meeting place. An inscription on an arch
testifies to this public function:

Fallere nostra venant et falli pondera. Meque pondero cum merces ponderat ipse deus. "Our weights
do not permit cheating. When I measure goods, God measures with me."

The palace is now home to the city archives. The square before it is used for the opening ceremony
of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival.

Archival and Other Holdings

Archival holdings of the Jewish Community in Dubrovnik was destroyed during WW2, and most
archival holding with regard to the city's Jewish population or the remembrance of it refers to the
after-war period. Mrs Radmila Šutalo is working on her PhD thesis on the history of Dubrovnik Jews
(r.sutalo@gmail.com). Most valuable artefact is probably a school diary from the end of the 19th
century/ 1900s, from the Dubrovnik Jewish Elementary School.

Palača Sponza

Smještena na sjeveroistočnom dijelu Place, južno od Crkve sv. Nikole na Prijekom, sa zapada
Zlatarska ulica, sa istoka Ulica sv. Dominika, u sklopu povijesnog upravnog-sakralnog središta. Takav
smještaj u istočnom dijelu grada logični je nastavak i upotpunjenje upravno-sakralnog gradskog
središta (sklopa objekata od Kneževog Dvora do Gradskog zvonika sa stolnom crkvom i crkvom
gradskog zaštitnika) što ukazuje, kako na istančan osjećaj graditelja i naručioca gradnje da jednom od
najraskošnijih zgrada zaokruže urbanističku cjelinu glavnog gradskog trga, tako i na praktični smisao
da postave objekt javnog karaktera (carinarnicu) na glavnu gradsku tržnicu.

Najstariji objekt kojeg arhivski podaci spominju na prostoru današnje Sponze je Velika carinarnica,
koju dopuna Statuta iz 1296. godine navodi kao već postojeću općinsku zgradu. Velika carinarnica je
u tom vremenu (13. stoljeće) samo jedna u nizu općinskih zgrada u istočnom dijelu Grada.

Potreba za izgradnjom većeg, jedinstvenog objekta bila je uvjetovana jakim razvitkom trgovine, u
doba najsnažnijeg ekonomskog uspona Dubrovnika, pri čemu su postojeći skladišni prostori u Gradu
postali nedovoljni. Ideja je konkretizirana u zaključku Vijeća iz 1513. kada je utvrđeno da se počne
razmišljati o izgradnji veće i udobnije građevine.
Prema projektu općinskog inženjera Paskoja Miličevića, sagrađena je i nova zgrada carinarnice –
Divona (1516.-1520.). Objedinjujući srednjovjekovni objekt carinarnice, razna skladišta, objekt za
skupljanje kišnice (Sponza), radionice obrtnika-zlatara te druge objekte, vezujući ih uz raniju ulicu,
koja preoblikuje u veliko dvorište – atrij, Paskoje stvara središnji javni objekt vezan uz trgovinu. Uz
navedene sadržaje u zgradi nove carinarnice našla je prostor i kovnica novca i oružana. Tu su se
održavali i sastanci Akademije Složnih i Dangubijeh, a kasnije tu su bile škole za djecu vlastele i
građana, pravnička škola i tiskara.

I kao što slike dubrovačkih slikara imaju ponekad zlatnu pozadinu, tako i Divona ima gotičke lukove,
mrežišta i sve ostale ukrase kasnogotičkog stila. Ona je primjer tog prijelaznog, gotičko-renesansnog
stila, korištenog bezbroj puta u stambenoj arhitekturi ovog grada i područja.

Miličevićev projekt, osim rastvorenog trijema u prizemlju i na prvom katu u dvorištu, predlaže i
hladoviti trijem na pročelju. Izradili su ga klesari, braća Andrijići iz poznate korčulanske porodice
graditelja i skulptora, a bogatu arhitektonsku plastiku cijelog objekta klesali su mnogi manje poznati
majstori. U unutrašnjosti pojedina skladišta su obilježena imenima svetaca, ispisanim kapitalom na
nadvratnicima ulaza. Na začelnom zidu dvorišta je kipar Beltrand Gallicus izradio je reljef medaljona s
Kristovim imenom i dva anđela.

Glavni natpis upozorava na točnost dubrovačkih mjera i upućuje mjerače na opreznost:

FALLERE NOSTRA VETANT· ET FALLI PONDERA· MEQVE PONDERO CVM MERCES· PONDERAT IPSE
DEVS (Naši utezi ne daju da se vara i bude prevaren. Kad mjerim robu, mene mjeri sam Bog).

Objekt je posebno dragocjen, jer je ostao sačuvan u svojoj izvornosti prelaznog gotičko-renesansnog
stila od vremena izgradnje do danas, unatoč velikoj trešnji 1667. godine koji je uništio veliki dio
spomenika Grada i promijenio mu fizionomiju ustupivši mjesto novom, baroknom izričaju.

Divona je i ključni objekt i u pogledu urbanističkog projektiranja. Dok je zapadni rub Place imao već
ranije izgrađeni veliki kompleks Franjevačkog samostana i crkve sa zvonikom (na sjevernom dijelu) i
velikog Samostana sv. Klare (na južnom dijelu) sada to postiže i istočni kraj izgradnjom carinarnice uz
vertikalu gradskog zvonika (na sjeveroistočnom dijelu Place) i srednjovjekovne Crkve sv. Vlaha i
gradske lože (na južnom dijelu).

Danas palača Sponza, čuva najdragocjenije arhivsko gradivo dubrovačkog područja. Tu je smješten
Dubrovački arhiv s dokumentima, iz svih proteklih stoljeća do najnovijeg vremena.