Barbara Archaeological Site, Gornji Brgat

Barbara is a hill (elevation 299) east of Gornji Brgat, on the western edge of Župa dubrovačka, near the Ivanjica pass by which Dubrovnik was connected with its hinterland. It is interesting to visitors because on a single hill prehistory, antiquity, the Middle Ages and the wars of more recent times are layered.

Surface finds of pottery and about a hundred meters of a dry-stone rampart indicate that an Illyrian hillfort from the Bronze and Iron Ages stood here. The pottery and the toponym Sutvara point to a late antique fortress or settlement with an early Christian church of St. Barbara, probably demolished very early. In the late Middle Ages there was a cemetery with stećci on the site, of which four undecorated monuments remain. Later the position served the military: in 1806, during the French occupation of Dubrovnik, and in the Second World War the Italians built bunkers, trenches and auxiliary buildings here.

The site is a protected cultural good, entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia under the code Z-6819.

Data: Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Culture and Media), Open Licence.