Tvrdalj Petra Hektorovića

About the museum

Tvrdalj is the fortified summer residence of the writer Petar Hektorović, author of the first realistic epic of Croatian Renaissance literature, “Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje” (Fishing and Fishermen's Talk), and one of the symbols of Stari Grad. The poet built it over a long period and with great care, regarding it as just as important as his main literary work. With it he realised the idea of a microcosm, a small enclosed world in which there is room for all God's creatures: fish, birds, plants and people.

The best-known part of Tvrdalj is the fishpond surrounded by an arcade, in which grey mullets (cipli) live freely; above it rises a tower with stone nests for pigeons. Behind the fishpond to the south stretches a well-kept garden with plants that his poet friends from Dubrovnik sent to the poet. Tvrdalj is also a “stone book”: Hektorović carved dozens of inscriptions in Latin and Croatian and one in Italian, mostly moralistic in tone and in the spirit of humanism. In the western wing there is a small ethnographic collection of objects from everyday life on the island, and from wine-growing and olive-growing.

Highlights

• Fishpond with arcade and dovecote
• Inscriptions carved by the poet himself
• Renaissance garden
• Ethnographic collection in the western wing

Permanent exhibition

• Etnografska zbirka – The western wing of Tvrdalj houses an ethnographic collection, formed in 1964, of original objects from everyday island life and from wine-growing and olive-growing.

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