CROATIA—Dubrovnik, Croatia, in the former Yugoslavia, is a relatively new city by European standards.  It began in the 7th century AD, when sailors and traders in its area built the first fortifications to protect themselves from raids by various interests, all classified as "barbarians."

We would not have gone to this town except that it was one of the ports of call of the Costa Fortuna, an Italian ship with fine crew and service, on an eastern Mediterranean tour. We are very glad that by accident, we got to Dubrovnik.

It is one of the most successful of the city-states of Europe in maintaining its independence from various invaders and attackers.  Venice held sway over the Republic of Dubrovnik for about a century.  Napoleon conquered it in 1806 and upon his fall, the European powers gave it to Austria.  The Ottoman Empire conquered it during WWII.  The remnants of the Yugoslavian Army laid siege to it for a year, shelled the town and killed thousands of people, but could not take the town.

The reason for the relative success of this town in defending itself was the massive walls built around the town and its natural harbor, one inside the other, with a dry moat in between.  Thirty feet of solid masonry protected the town, even from the invention of gunpowder and cannons, which reduced most other fortifications in Europe to historical oddities of no military value.

An earthquake in 1667 destroyed much of "the city" which is the simple reference by natives that means the parts of Dubrovnik within its massive walls.  After that, the people rebuilt the walls as they were before.  They did so again after WWII, and again after the Yugoslavian civil war.  This city is the one place in Europe where visitors can see what a medieval city looked like at the height of its power.

Like the Washington Monument, you can see, by slight changes in the color of the stones and the mortar, where the original construction stops and the reconstruction begins.  But it is unlike Rhodes, for instance, where the reconstruction used poured concrete to "rebuild" a Roman theater.  The stage is there, the seats are there, the acoustics are terrific, but poured concrete?  I mean, really.

One experience in Dubrovnik was particularly compelling. We were in a monastery in "the City." I noticed that there were dozens of small tombstones installed in the walls, where the bones (not the entire bodies) of monks were buried.  My Latin is rusty, and this was carved using the old Roman language with its 24 letters, with verbs left out for brevity. So I could not tell the name of a particular monk interred in the last spot on the left-hand side of the wall on the way out.

He had to be important, because thousands of monks had lived, worked, prayed and died in that place, but only dozens had tombstones in the wall.  I'll call him Cedric, which is an ancient and sturdy name that seems to suit his time and place.

Cedric was laid to rest in 1480, 12 years before North America would become a gleam in Christopher Columbus's eye. Cedric lived in a republic that was able to defend itself successfully for centuries.  Cedric has some lessons to offer us in America, in our new nation that is still learning how to defend itself.

Dubrovnik was the second-most impressive port of call we visited on this trip.  We recommend it to all who have a taste for what Barbara Tuchman called in her towering book "A Distant Trumpet," as a precursor of the modern world to come.

What was the most impressive port of call on this trip? Santorini, of course. Nothing beats visual beauty so impressive that it literally takes your breath away, and you say, as everyone does of Alaska, "the photographs cannot do it justice." But that's a story for another day.