Dubrovnik Jewish Heritage Private Walking Tour

Great Tour Guide

Vesna was a great tour leader and we highly recommend her for any plans you may have to tour in Dubrovnik.

via Viator

Great tour with very professional guide

Vesna did an excellent job incorporating the history of Croatia, Dubrovnik and the former Yugoslavia into our Jewish history tour. She is very knowledgeable and this came through in her extensive detailed explanations of the various sites we visited. Her stories about what it was like to be Jewish during various periods in Croatian history were incredibly informative and interesting. Vesna was also very easy to work with and highly communicative in the process of setting up the tour and logistics.

Response from the operator: Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed the tour.

via Tripadvisor

Immersed in the Jewish history of Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik is a city with layer upon layer of history, and Vesna has the remarkable ability to make those layers come alive as though she had personally lived through all of them. We toured the Old City with her with a particular interest in Dubrovnik’s Jewish history, but the experience became much broader than that. Vesna explained the long and complicated place of Jews in the city, including the extraordinary efforts Dubrovnik’s authorities sometimes made to soften or evade outside demands for segregation. The descriptions were extremely vivid because Vesna spoke as though she had actually lived through these events. One of the most memorable stories involved the old Jewish street and what amounted, at times, to a “show ghetto” maintained largely to satisfy visiting papal authorities while Jewish residents otherwise continued to live more freely than they did in much of medieval Europe. But what makes Vesna exceptional is not simply the depth of her knowledge, which is encyclopedic. She connects history to actual people. She told us, for example, that Dubrovnik’s gates continued to close promptly at 9 p.m. into the early 20th century, and that her great-grandmother was locked outside more than once. According to the grandmother, she had simply stayed too long gossiping with friends. According to the rest of the family, there may have been a somewhat more romantic explanation. Vesna also spoke movingly about Dubrovnik’s siege during the wars of the 1990s. This was not distant history for her. Her family lived through months without reliable clean water, boiling rainwater to drink, washing with seawater, and sometimes having virtually nothing to eat. Beneath Dubrovnik’s present-day beauty is a population in which many adults still carry memories of an extraordinarily painful period. Dubrovnik now receives significant numbers of visitors principally interested in “Game of Thrones.” Vesna long ago tired of correcting every misconception and has developed a wonderfully dry sense of humor about the silly questions. We were delighted to spend about an hour after the end of the formal tour sitting at a cafe and schmoozing with Vesna, learning more about her life and the everyday situation in Dubrovnik. We learned something very surprising about her connection to the Jewish community, but you should take the tour to discover it for yourself. This "informal time" was just as fascinating as the tour itself. If you want to understand Dubrovnik --and particularly the Jewish experience rather spend a few hours with Vesna. It was one of the highlights of our time in Croatia.

Response from the operator: You left me speechless! There are no words to thank you! It was my privilege to take people like you on the tour. Thank you.

via Tripadvisor

An Excellent Jewish Heritage Tour of Dubrovnik

We had an excellent private Jewish heritage tour of Dubrovnik with Vesna. She was knowledgeable, engaging and passionate, bringing the history of Dubrovnik’s Jewish community to life. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would highly recommend Vesna to anyone interested in exploring Dubrovnik’s Jewish history.

via Tripadvisor

Outstanding Jewish tour from Vesna!

Vesna was an outstanding tour guide. She share a lot about the history of Dubrovnik and was extremely knowledgeable about the history of Jews in the region. We really enjoyed learning from Vesna and there was no question she would not answer that we threw at her. Neil & Janey, San Francisco CA area

Response from the operator: Thank you! It was my pleasure to take you on this tour, and I enjoyed every minute spent with the two of you.

via Tripadvisor