Fife years of war, the loss of so many beloved persons and finally an earthquake in the unusual rainy winter afterwards, gave the inhabitants of Dubrovnik the hopeless feeling as if they were abandoned by God himself.

Reconstruction of the buildings was in progress, but progressed very slowly. The old tiles of the destroyed rooftops, coloured by the years and partly grown over, were now laying as garbage in the streets, because they didn’t fit on the new provided tile system.