Martin Fone's Blog

The Walls of Ston

Here’s a question for you trivia fans: What is the largest complete fortress system in Europe? Well, at 5.5km it is the Walls of Ston in Croatia, second only globally to the Great Wall of China. Hadrian’s Wall, which is incomplete – that’s what a mix of Romans and Scots does for you – is the longest stone wall in Europe. The Walls of Ston sound as though they should come out of the Game of Thrones and in a way they do. They can be seen in the show providing the fortifications for King’s Landing.

Ston is 34 miles north of Dubrovnik and is situated on Croatia’s second largest peninsula, Peljesac. The wall, which was built from 1334 to 1506 CE, runs from one side of the peninsula to the other, linking Ston with Mali Ston. Looking rather like an irregular pentagon, the limestone structure originally boasted 40 towers and five fortresses, but only 20 towers survive to this day. The wall was also originally around 7 kilometres in length but was damaged in an earthquake in 1667.

Within the area enclosed by the walls three streets ran from north to south and three from east to west to create a grid system of 15 blocks, each of which contained ten houses. There were two city gates through which authorised visitors could enter the town, the Field Gate or Poljska vrata bearing an inscription dating it to 1506. The town was a model of urban planning, its sewers and water mains, built in 1581, making it unusually hygienic for the time. It remains today a remarkable historical site and is a popular tourist destination for those holidaying in Croatia.

So who built the walls? The major influence in the area was the city-state of Ragusa or Dubrovnik which in the early part of the 14th century was under the control of the Venetians. Ston, however, was under Serbian control but on 22nd January 1325 the king, Stefan Uros III, announced that he was selling it and the Peljesac peninsula to Ragusa, the handover taking place some eight years later. Although Dubrovnik has some pretty impressive fortifications of its own, the Ragusans decided that they would build some further defensive protection at the edge of their newly acquired territory.

Perhaps an equally important consideration was the need to protect the salt pans in the area, which produced what was reputed to be the purest salt in the entire Mediterranean area and were a nice earner for whoever controlled them. The salt works are still going, the oldest active salt-works in the world, and they remain faithful to the traditional methods of salt production which have not changed in four millennia. The Republic of Ragusa grew fat on the profits.

In 1358 under the Treaty of Zadar which ended hostilities between the Hungarians and Venetians, the Venetians were forced to hand over control of the Dalmatian coast to Hungary. Although nominally under the control of the Hungarians, the Republic of Ragusa, as it was now known, was left pretty much to its own devices an d work on the walls continued until they were finally completed in the early part of the 16th century.

When the Ragusan Republic collapsed after the Napoleonic Wars, some of the walls were demolished and stones were used by the Austrians to build schools and other communal buildings. Some were taken to build a triumphal arch to commemorate the visit of the Austrian emperor in 1884. But mercifully, a complete pentagon survived the depredations of nature and man and is there for us to enjoy.