Architecture of the Placa in Dubrovnik: A Sixteenth-Century Project

Based on the results of most recent research concerning the so-called fourth block of communal houses in the early 1560s, this article argues in favour of the assumption that the facade of this particular block was used as a model for all the house facades later constructed on the north side of the Placa, at first, directly—in the hitherto unknown construction undertakings of two new blocks of communal houses in the westernmost part of the city’s main thoroughfare (near the Franciscan Church) in the early, i.e., mid-seventeenth century—and later, indirectly, in the reconstruction after the 1667 earthquake. Further examined are the issues that result from the analysis of present-day architectural structures in the light of previously known and recently discovered archival and visual evidence, as well as the role of certain participants in the processes of decision-making, design and construction, notably Ragusan authorities as initiators, investors and commissioners, along with two foreign architects—Jacques de Spinis, who arrived in Dubrovnik from Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, and papal architect Giulio Cerruti, sent directly from Rome in the autumn of 1667.