Potres i obnova u Dubrovniku 1520. godine

Abstract

In 1520 the territory of Ragusa republic was struck by a strong earthquake. According to the documents, all the private houses and also the main religious and public buildings in the city were damaged. The totality of the measures taken from government’s units allow to know the modality of emergency management by a strongly centralized state organization, ensuring at the same time individual freedom and social balance. The effects of earthquake create the necessity of a wide reconstruction work, involving both private and public sphere. The private citizens did mainly emergency interventions, in order to resolve static problems, not taking the opportunity for a restyling of their buildings. A different attitude is recorded in the public sphere. New constructions, reparations and restorations of pre-existing buildings, completion of edifices under construction, interventions on the urban spaces represent the wide range of operations carried out. Among these we can number: the construction of the votive chapel devoted to Ascension (Sv. Spas); the completion of the new customs warehouse; the Rectors’ Palace’s reparation; the general reorganization of public space in front of the Palace and between this and the cathedral. Interesting information about the modality of intervention and the yards’ management emerge from the investigation. In the public works the scene is dominated by local masters, stonecutters proceeding from Curzola . According to a consolidated praxis, the documents register the will of the government to recall a foreigner architect, as consultant and supervisor, but an aura of mystery shrouds the affair. After all, the 1520 earthquake gives a brief but significant impulse to construction activity in Ragusa, marking the affirmation of local masters and distracting the attention from the problem of defence, that became actual again in a quite short time.