At the beginning of the Riva in Cavtat, you will be greeted by a monument to one of his greatest sons - Valtazar Bogišić (1834–1908). Croatian to the jurist and ethnologist, whose tombstone I later came across in the cemetery above the place. Valtazar Bogišić declared himself to be a Serb of the Catholic religion all his life, which is not disputed even in Croatia. It entered the anthology One hundred of the most famous Serbs.
photo: r. shepherdWater polo pool
Right there on the Riva there is a "pool" (actually a fenced part of the bay) where local boys practice water polo. The birthplace of another famous resident of this town, Vlaho Bukovac, has been turned into a museum, but it was not open that day because it was the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi, which is a national holiday in Croatia.
On the Riva is also the Church of St. Nicholas from 1484. It was upgraded in 1737, and the bell tower also dates from that time. Next to the church is the Pinakoteka, a collection of works of art that includes 70 items of great value: an alabaster relief of the head of St. John from the 15th century, icon of St. Nicholas from the 15th century, a processional crucifix and a censer from the 16th century, a large number of paintings and metal works from the 17th and 18th centuries, paintings by Carmella Reggio from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as works by authors from the 20th century: Vlaho Bukovac, Niko Miljan, Olga Solovjeva. In the church itself, I notice an interesting and not so common detail: on some of the 14 paintings representing Jesus' Way of the Cross, there are motifs of women and men in Konavo traditional costumes as well as the sea in the background, which was certainly not the case in Jerusalem.
photo: r. shepherdDO YOU HEAR THE CICKS: Cavtat
As I walk along the coast along the promenade that surrounds the entire Rat peninsula on which the ancient town is located, the peace of the stone beaches in the shade of pine trees is only occasionally disturbed by the planes that fly over Cavtat while descending towards Ćilipi. The cemetery on the hill above the town is dominated by the Mausoleum of the Račić family from 1922, the work of Ivan Meštrović. It is approached by the Franciscan monastery of Our Lady of the Snow from the south side, and by the continuation of Prijeko Street from the east. The mausoleum of the Račić family was the first realized architectural work of the sculptor Ivan Meštrović. It was built for the Račić shipowning family from 1920 to 1922. Ivo Račić, and then his two children, died in 1919 from the Spanish fever that swept through Europe after the Great War. At the invitation of Marija, the widow of Ivo Račić, and according to her earlier promise to her daughter Marija Banac, Meštrović began the construction of the votive burial church dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels. With different historical styles, he eclectically builds a new, modern Art Deco space where architecture and sculpture are equal. The mausoleum has an octagonal shape with prominent chapels in the shape of a Greek cross. The interior is rich in stylized sculptures and reliefs (the Virgin Mary with Jesus, playing angels, heads of angels, St. Rocco, crucified Christ, portraits of members of the Račić family, floral motifs...). Meštrović won the Grand Prix for this work in 1925 at the International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Art in Paris.
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At the end of Frankopanska street on the Sustjepan peninsula, on the other side of Cavtat, is the "Croatia" hotel. Three and a half decades ago, this luxurious building was the stage of a bizarre historical event - an attempt to restore the Republic of Dubrovnik. Namely, with the introduction of multi-party parliamentarism on the territory of Yugoslavia, autonomist and even separatist ideas about the Republic of Dubrovnik, similar to modern Monaco, San Marino or Hong Kong, are reviving in Dubrovnik. Adherents of these ideas saw themselves as Yugoslav or Dubrovnik patriots, and gathered around the Movement for the Republic of Dubrovnik.
It was announced on November 24, 1991 in the "Croatia" hotel. At this meeting, the Small Council of the Republic of Dubrovnik was established as the governing body of the Republic. The meeting was attended by about a hundred citizens from Dubrovnik, Cavtat, Konavalo, Mlin and Kupar. On that occasion, the newly elected Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed republic, Aleksandar Aco Apolonio, addressed the participants of the meeting, as well as the gathered citizens: "We enjoy freedom here. And the Yugoslav People's Army has never been an occupying force, as the fascist and Ustasha authorities try to denigrate it. It guarantees us a free life here and the conditions to restore with our own efforts what was destroyed by the war. The idea of forming the Republic of Dubrovnik has been alive for a long time, but it was not allowed to express itself freely. which the people of Dubrovnik have had since 1944, and especially in recent years. We will no longer find ourselves in a situation where they import wars, import hatred, and say that the Dubrovnik area and the city belong to Dubrovnik!"
Aco Apolonio, born in 1919 in Herceg Novi to an Istrian father and a Dubrovnik mother, came to the city in 1941 as a native of Skoje. After the war, Apollonio was a "face" in the social, political and public life of the city. He was a public prosecutor for years, and became a representative of the Tourist Association of the former Dubrovnik Municipality in the Presidency of the Tourist Association of Yugoslavia. In short, a respectable person in Dubrovnik.
The idea of the autonomist movement was the separation of the Republic of Dubrovnik from Croatia, international protection and international recognition of the state and later, its entry into a new, future Yugoslav federation with other republics of the former SFRY that want it. There were also ideas about forming the first duty-free zone in southern Europe.
After the formation of the new authorities, the expected support of other federal units of the former Yugoslavia, and even Serbia, was absent. The Serbian government has never made any statements in support of the government of the self-proclaimed republic, nor has it included the Republic of Dubrovnik in its political discussions. The only open support for the authorities of the Republic came from the Serbian Radical Party and its leader Vojislav Seselj, as well as from the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic.
It was the time when "Duga" published a photo of its journalist Nebojša Jevrić "bathing in the pool next to the burnt house of Teresa Kesovia" in Cavtat. Later, Milomir Marić admitted that Jevrić had actually photographed himself in Montenegro, but they agreed to market the photos that way "for the sake of attractiveness".
The action of the Small Council in the area of the territory under the control of the JNA was symbolic, because the real police and judicial power was in the hands of the Yugoslav army. On the initiative of Germany, European countries recognize Croatia and Slovenia on January 15, 1992, and at the beginning of April, the JNA begins to withdraw all its units from the Dubrovnik battlefield.
With the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from this area, in fear of revenge by the Croatian authorities, the autonomists decide to dissolve the Small Council and to "temporarily" leave the Dubrovnik region together with the army. With this act, the self-proclaimed Republic effectively ceased to exist. Together with the army, several thousand civilians (some estimates speak of over 10.000 refugees), mostly sympathizers of the Republic and those who declared themselves as Serbs or Yugoslavs, are also withdrawing from this area. The leader of the autonomist movement and the first prime minister of the Republic, Aleksandar Aco Apolonio, escaped to Belgrade, where he lived until his death in 2001. While in exile in Belgrade, Dragan Banjac, a pre-war correspondent for "Borba" from Dubrovnik, interviewed him in 1993. Banjac wrote about his meetings with Aco Apoloni in the buffet on the 5th floor of the "Borbine" building: "I had mixed feelings about this man. At one time, during my great importance and power, I could not even get close to him, and when he liked exile, which I must say was still his personal choice, I looked at a man who begged for a little space in the newspaper where I was quite powerful. For a matter, then, the Republic that reminds me of Jacob's house, the biblical story about the ladder that Jacob used to climb to heaven in a dream... And Apollonio could have stayed out of politics in his later years and calmly waited for his end in the City, where every stone of his looks like a flower to me".
How he actually ended up in Dubrovnik is also told by the testimony of a woman from Dubrovnik published by "Dubrovački dnevnik". She wanted to remain anonymous, and on her own initiative got involved in saving the Aca Apollonius library: "I don't remember if it was the end of 1991 or the beginning, or even the spring of 1992. I was walking by the 'Ucović house' on Boninova, which is located at the bottom of Orsatova Street. I saw thrown furniture and books. I asked one of the workers: 'Whose furniture is that, whose books are those?' They told me it was all from Aca Apollonius. I estimate that there were more than a thousand books. All thrown out. I went to the faculty and talked to the dean, Dr. Ivo Spremić, about the books. He connected with prim. Dr. Stijep Bogdanović, head of the hospital during the war, who received the books at the Dubrovnik Medical Center. I heard that Dr. Bogdanović had problems with his noble action, and he was soon dismissed," she said.
