ja_mageia

Towering above the town to the north, Mount Srd was a much-visited attraction until 1991, when Yugoslav forces destroyed the cable car that used to deliver tourists to its 412-metre-high summit. A handful of people still make the trip, either by the winding footpath (the aptly named serpentine) which heads up to the top from jadranska cesta, or via the badly surfaced road which leaves the Cavtat-bound highway 1kin southeast of Dubrovnik, clambering its way to the village of Bosanka and thence on to the shoulder of the mountain. If you're walking, bear in mind that the serpentine is unshaded, and the ascent can be a hellish experience in hot weather.

Whichever way you get there, you'll be rewarded with a stunning view of the walled town below, with a panorama of the whole coast stretching as far as the Pe1ješac peninsula to the northwest.The summit-crowning Fort Imperial was built by Napoleon's occupying army in 1808 and served as a disco in the 1980s before reverting to its original military purpose in 1991, when it was successfully held by Dubrovnik's defenders. Seriously smashed up by Serbian artillery, however, it's now derelict and can't be visited. The mountain seems a world away from the lush subtropical world of the coastal strip; nothing much grows here apart from sage, which is hungrily devoured by the sheep sent here to graze by the farmers of Bosanka.