(Cavtat, 4 July 1855 – Prague, 23 April 1922) Vlaho Bukovac is definitely one of the most important Croatian artists. And he enjoys this status in our history of art not only for his exceptional artistic talent, the ease with which he painted and the large number of paintings that he created during his lifetime, but also for his social status. Bukovac was our first modern artist whose work made possible the acquisition of his own palace in the centre of the capital city, and who, as an intellectual, attained a high social status and recognition.

(Dubrovnik, 27 September 1837 – Dubrovnik, 16 January 1907) The figure of a blind street singer, amateur-actor, singer of kolenda traditional Christmas carols and a street merchant, certainly deserves a place in the gallery of idiosyncratic Dubrovnik characters. He was a person who lived, seemingly, on the “margins” of Dubrovnik society, but who definitely left an indelible mark in his time. The scant information we have about his life tells us that he spent a poverty-stricken childhood with a mother who was originally from Malta – so they called him Vlaho Maltez, his father was a mariner and he had two sisters. In the first months of his life he suffered from seborrheic dermatitis, and because of poverty and incorrect treatment it resulted in permanent blindness.

(Dubrovnik, 8 September 1668 – Rome, 17 June 1707) “It is pointless to fiercely oppose the power of death, or oppose the intensity of disease with the terror of debate, medicine is the only thing that heals!” These are words of Đuro Baglivi from Dubrovnik, one of the most prominent European physicians of the late 17th and early 18th century. Baglivi was the representative of iatrophysics, the school of medicine in the 17th century that attempted to explain physiological processes in the human body on the basis of geometry, physics and mathematics, using methods of observation of patients and experiments on animals.

(Dubrovnik, 7 February 1752 – Zaton, 27 October 1833) Conflicts between great European powers in late 18th and early 19th centuries, reverberated in Dubrovnik as well. And, despite the fact that Dubrovnik tried to preserve its neutrality, fight broke out in their territory at the beginning of the 19th century, which lead to the abolishment of the Republic in 1808. Eventually, the decisions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 meant there was no hope of its restitution. Even though members of the Dubrovnik nobility were polarized between the Francophile and Austrophile currents as early as the second half of the 18th century, even the most adamant Francophiles that were influenced by the culture of the Enlightenment, the encyclopaedists and the French Revolution were not in favour of revolutionary change. We could say that they wanted an evolution of the Ragusan society and its strict aristocratic-republican template that was only regurgitated for centuries. The fall of the Republic deeply distressed the nobility, but also a segment of the bourgeoisie who did not want foreigners in their city. One of them was Đuro Hidža (Higgia), Dubrovnik physician, poet and translator.