One day this week we took the ferry to Lokrum, a little island just across the bay from Old Town Dubrovnik. It's actually a Croatian national park and protected preserve where there are no cars and no permanent residents. Everyone has to be off the island by 6 pm each night. We spent most of a day there and enjoyed walking around the island. The island is covered with graveled paths that made it easy to get around, and we stopped in the little gift shop at the boat dock and bought a map showing the main attractions. 

Lokrum was first settled in 1023 when the Benedictine monks built an abbey . We saw the ruins of the old abbey and the cloistered garden where the monks lived. They built beautiful gardens and an olive grove. Life must have been very calm and peaceful in such a beautiful and serene place.
 
We walked around the ruined monastery and saw the building and gardens built much later in 1859 by Maximilian Ferdinand of the Hapsburgs when he came to the island. Then, in 1959 a botanical garden was built on the island, so there is quite a history of gardening and growing exotic plants on Lokrum. Even today, the island is lush and green with olive groves, cypress trees, and forests of pines and other trees. 

There is a unique little pond on Lokrum that is fed by an inlet from the sea so that it's shallow and clear and filled with salt water. It's surrounded by rocks, many of which are flat and provide a great place to sunbathe. People were wading in the pond and sunning on the rocks the day we were there.

We walked to the highest point on the island and saw the old fort, Fort Royal, built in 1806 by Napoleon's men when he conquered this area. We climbed to the top of the circular stone fort and could see all around the island. The view of Dubrovnik across the water and the Adriatic are stupendous from this vantage point.

Legend says that in 1192 Richard the Lionheart was shipwrecked on the island on his way home from the crusades. We saw the rocky beach where he was said to have landed, thankful to be alive and safe. He built a church In Dubrovnik across the bay as a way of expressing his gratitude.

We spent most of the day on Lokrum, stopping for a cold drink and rest in between climbing around ruined buildings and wandering through forested paths and gardens. It was beautiful day in a very special place. Enjoy the pics!