The Cruise of the Branwen

RAGUSA AND SPALATO Count in 1221. Within the next fourteen years the Dominican and Franciscan Friars arrived. The traces of all three are still very visible. But nothing is left of our own Richard Creur de Lion, who touched dry land close to Ragusa for the first time on returning from the Crusades, borrowed a sum of money to erect a Church of Thanksgiving, and went away, leaving his creditors to build it. The present plan of the town was laid out when the old wooden trading city was burnt in I 292 ; and as you walk up the stately Corso from the magnificent medireval gateway of the Porta Pile, you realise that this is a place where earthquakes have worked their will. The Corso itself dates only from 1667, because of the last great visitation in the April of that year ; but it is full of character and has preserved the style and details of many of the older houses ; and everything you see is solid stone, the masonry that rises on each side, and every inch of paved thoroughfare between. The architecture goes on _improving as you advance until you reach the beautiful Venetian Dogana on the left, while on your right the Rector's Palace stretches down one side of the vista which is ended by the Church of S. Biagio. These buildings resume all the history of the place that it is necessary to know; for the colossal moat and fortifications, ending in the Porta Pile at one end and the harbour on the other, were set up in those glorious days of independence at the beginning of the fifteenth century when Ragusa had shaken off the rule of Hungary and not yet 159